Christmas on Sarabi

Christmas Day on Sarabi started with us Abbey and I speaking some festive rhyming lines as we rowed our monotonous strokes. I regret that none of us wrote it down, but the fun of putting it together set the morale high for the day. The morning was scattered with showers; with those came some stunning rainbows. For most of the day I didn’t feel sad to be missing out on Christmas with my family in the way the others were. I was in the moment and entirely happy to be out on the wilds of the ocean. We rowed 3up for the day, so the time flew by. It got a bit more challenging towards the end of the day because the waves became more beam on – not very big, just choppy, rough stuff that was really annoying to row in. It was impossible to row well in those conditions; the waves were so disruptive to the rhythm it became impossible to get into a flow state.

‘Fun’ was one of our team values, and it felt important that today of all days was decisively fun. While on my short break between the long row shifts, I squished myself into the stern corner, legs straddled across the deck just millimetres from the extension of Viki’s full stroke. We had wrapped ourselves a Christmas present in the form of a drybag of edible festive treats, but none of us could remember what was in it given we’d packed it in September! We had a huge amount of joy in opening the surprise... never has a chocolate snowball tasted so good! We had the festive tunes on as I was dishing out the snacks, and, while the rowing felt slow, the day passed quickly.

We had a brief Christmas call with Henry, who didn’t seem to be having the best time and was still trying to master the rehydration of his fancy home-cooked steaks. His goji berry juice had leaked, leaving a sticky mess in the hatch, but today was not the day for cleaning it. I managed to connect to the BGAN to download a load of messages, but my break time and run out before I had chance to read any of them.

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When the daylight was gone and I was getting sorted for my night shifts, I called home. My mum read me a quote from my favourite book of my childhood: The Owl Who Was Afraid Of The Dark. It’s a very sweet story about a baby owl overcoming his fear of darkness, and my parents used to take turns reading chapters to me and Fiona before we’d go to bed. I was so touched by her words in that moment… they meant more than they ever had before.

"Well?" said his mother. Plop took a deep breath.

"The small boy said DARK IS EXCITING. The old lady said DARK IS KIND. The boy scout said DARK IS FUN. The little girl said DARK IS NECESSARY. The Father Christmas lady said DARK IS FASCINATING. The man with the telescope said DARK IS WONDERFUL and Orion the black cat says DARK IS BEAUTIFUL."

"And what do you think, Plop?”

Plop looked up at his mother with twinkling eyes. "I think”, he said… “I think DARK IS SUPER!!”

When she finished the last word, a silence fell between us. The phone line crackled and I thought I heard a sniffle from the other end. I didn’t want to hear my mum cry, not at Christmas. Holding back my own tears, I managed to whisper “I love you” before I hung up the phone and wept.