Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Steve Pike
AS Chris Bertish begins to prove that he will actually make it across the Atlantic Ocean on his stand-up paddleboard, people are sitting up and taking notice.
Entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson and adventurer Sir Ranulph Fiennes are among the big names and larger-than-life characters who are pitching in to urge the bedraggled big wave surfer as he nears the end.
He has had more than two million people following his journey, partly because his regular posts describing the rigours he endures have made for deliciously voyeuristic reading.
In recent days, he has been battered by squalls after 85 days at sea. As he approaches Antigua, with about 300 nautical miles remaining and the welcoming party organised tentatively for next Wednesday at English Harbour, conditions have been quite severe.
If you’ve been through a tropical squall, you’ll know they can be scary. A grey wall bears down on you, gobbling up the surface of the sea. You see the white caps coming, like a mob of misshapen creatures in full charge. Then suddenly, boom, they’re on you. The wind is howling, the raindrops are like missiles and the sea has turned into a heaving mess.
Bertish has fallen off his SUP ImpiFish numerous times. One photo from a GoPro mounted behind him shows a dramatic still of him lurching off the boat with his paddle in his right hand.
The closer he gets, and the more scary the moment and the more on tenterhooks we become, the more people are starting to sit up and say. “Oh my gosh. Maybe he’s going to do it.”
The naysayers and pessimists are starting to come full circle, coming out in droves to support him. In the orange haze of uncertainty in the world, we need an inspiring David vs Goliath myth to take root in our consciousness and flourish.
He has broken a few world records. Perhaps the most remarkable on his relatively heavy craft is clocking over 62 nautical miles in 24 hours. But the whole thing is impressive enough, let alone the milestones. Strong trade winds at his back helped him to clock 210 miles in four days at an average of 52 per day.
In his Facebook posts, the language he uses is an outpouring of motivation for himself, with phrases like ‘catalyst for change’, ‘new solutions’, ‘changing paradigms’ and ‘my greatest asset’. They are what he calls his ‘power words’.
Then it struck me. These words, engorged with the sublime and the exalted, are a form of fuel. In these final days, which in reality seem quite grim when you read beneath the understated narrative, he is using his own thoughts and words as a nutritional supplement.
These Internet ramblings are like Mark Cavendish popping a Gnu energy boost 20kms from the end of the race.