Even though I am now 51, my favourite book remains We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea, Arthur Ransome’s enchanting 1937 tale in which four children – John, Roger, Susan and (innocent days) Titty – find themselves adrift off Harwich and bound for adventure aboard the little white cutter Goblin. With the anchor lost, they do what they have to do – seize the day and hoist the sails, crossing the North Sea to a safe landfall in Holland. En route, they do a little throwing up and a lot of growing up.

That book whispered a secret in my ear: that true adventure and the self-discovery it offers lies out there, in a magical place surrounded by nothing but horizon. At sea, anything is possible and nothing is certain.

So as I hurtled into my forties, edging closer to the front of the queue for Wholly Predictable Midlife Crisis, what else was I to do? Hit the gym? Embark on a series of affairs? Buy a bright yellow sports car? Well, yes, all of those things, actually, but above and beyond remained the siren song of the sea and the call to adventure.

My second favourite book was A Fighting Chance, the story of a 1966 Atlantic crossing in a rowing boat by John Ridgway and Chay Blyth. In 1997 Blyth had organised a transatlantic rowing race for crews of two. A second race was to be held four years later and, determined to be part of it, I spent two years training, searching for sponsors and building the 24ft boat.

I also pressganged Dominic, one of my best friends, to occupy the second berth. This, as it turned out, was a terrible mistake, but at the time I hadn’t read the explorer Ranulph Fiennes’s observation: “To take friends on stressful expeditions has always seemed to me to be foolish since I can think of no easier way of maiming a friendship for ever.”

But there was more to it than that. The real problem, I see now, was that I was the only one of the two of us who had a crisis to resolve. In Dominic’s view I had become obsessed, selfish and manipulative; this was supposed to have been a joint venture but I was the captain and he was the crew. Looking back, I think he was right.

The last night on land I stood alone looking out to sea, entranced by a shimmering highway of moonlight that led away from the small harbour in Tenerife and towards the promising horizon to which I had been drawn for so long.

The race began the next morning, October 8, 2001, the day before my 46th birthday. I was ecstatic. Dominic was quiet and thoughtful.

On a sparkling sea the race fleet scattered and edged away from land. We were quickly alone. That night the wind picked up and, over the next few days, emotions ran as high as the seas. Taking two-hour turns to row and rest, we barely spoke and whatever fragment of friendship that still connected us began to unravel.

When Dominic started to talk about leaving – boarding one of the two support yachts shadowing the race – I encouraged the idea. I may even have suggested it. I’m not sure at which point I forgot that Dominic’s wife had secured the sponsorship that had made the whole thing possible. Either way, out came the satellite phone and on our tenth day at sea I watched the top light of the approaching yacht rising like a star in the predawn.

With Dominic gone, I felt elated, liberated – finally in sole control of my boat and my destiny.

Except, as it turned out, I wasn’t. Finding myself alone in the Atlantic was like stepping off a cliff and discovering I could fly. The triumphant sense of self-reliance in those first days was electrifying. I rowed, navigated, rested, rowed again, heated water and cooked food, and, unbelievably, made progress, pausing each day at noon to mark my position on the chart.

With no other human being in sight, I was free to look up and out and that first evening, as the Atlantic heaved rhythmically under the boat, the sunset was a spectacular detonation of colours so beyond description as to border on the intimidating.

Night and day, the sea was alive, with everything from small fish to dolphin and the occasional ominous presence of a shark. At night, trails of phosphorescence lit the darting passages of unknown creatures below the black surface, turning them into sea serpents.

One morning, disappointed by my flagging mileage, I looked overboard and saw the boat had grown a beard. On a dead-calm day, armed with a plastic scraper and attached to a line, I went over the side and found myself floating 13,000ft (4,000m) above the bottom of the Atlantic, mesmerised by the clarity of the water and the sun’s rays vanishing into the depths.

As the evicted plant life sank, small fish appeared to feed. Bigger fish gathered to feed on them. By the time I hauled myself back on board I had created an entire food chain. Later, a shark brushed past the boat, reminding me I could have become part of it.

I’m not sure exactly when, but at some point awe and wonder began to give way to fatigue and a gnawing despair that I would never reach Barbados. I struggled on for 40 days and 1,000 miles, growing steadily weaker, and it all just slipped away from me. Surmountable problems with gear, food and water became insurmountable as the will to deal with them ebbed away along with my energy and my sanity. I yearned for my dull life.

I started to have long and interesting conversations with fish and the occasional storm petrel. Once, I rose from the oars, fell asleep and woke up overboard. I wept when my short-wave radio failed. I finally recognised that some sort of end was nigh when Jim Morrison of the Doors appeared and joined me for a singsong. We were pretty good, actually.

On November 23, 2001, it was my turn to leave the Star Challenger for the sanctuary of the race yacht. They couldn’t tow her and, as a hazard to shipping, they couldn’t leave her, so they set her alight. I sat on the yacht and watched her burn to the water-line. Now I had lost a second friend.

Do I regret it? No. It ended in something close to horror, but it remains the journey of a lifetime. I’m with Mark Twain on this. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do,” he wrote. “So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour... Explore. Dream. Discover.”

I discovered a lot, including that while it is possible to find out a great deal about yourself on a voyage of self-discovery, you might not always like what you find. Nevertheless, I returned from the sea more at peace with my place on earth and with my sense of perspective better adjusted. Crisis? What crisis? After nearly 50 days spent so close to the edge of the known world, the once soul-sapping details of an ordinary life take on a certain comforting charm.

Ultimate endurance
Will Hide

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