Sea Change - Ian Dickens

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a hand to attract a passing waiter’s eye and ordered two glasses of champagne.

      While the company decided how it was going to see me on my way, I took out an additional loan on the house in order to pay my £23,000 crew member’s bill, hoping beyond hope that the future would deliver a solution to fund it all.

      After several more months we finally agreed on a package that would allow me to leave but generously acknowledged my length of service and contribution to the company. My position would be made redundant and the resulting deal would provide enough funds (with careful housekeeping) to keep Anne and the children housed, fed and warm for my year away. The dog might have to get used to the cheaper offering of Sainsbury’s own brand of diced rabbit in gravy, though. And despite the supposed secrecy, by the time the announcement was made, the entire company knew all about my plans.

      By then I was sporting the giveaway skin colour of a man who had spent several weeks at sea with other like-minded volunteers likewise completing their training. More telling than the healthy skin tone was the healthy persona that went with it.

      The dark-rimmed, sunken eyes. The close-to-the-surface anger sparked by political games. The bubbling frustration caused by a surfeit of meetings in too many different locations with not enough time between them. The daily backlog of a hundred e-mails and mailbox messages. The ever-ringing mobile and the stream of urgent faxes that drove the breakneck pace of an average day. All of that had blissfully disappeared for a few precious days as I faced my new future and loved what I saw.

      The issues that seemed so important had folded themselves up and found a tiny recess in my mind where they remained wonderfully undisturbed. With them went the nine-to-five routine of commuting, the familiar London streets that marked the route between station and office, the sandwich bar with its unchanged lunchtime menus and the ongoing tedious exchanges between one department and another.

      All of this had been replaced by the growing camaraderie of a bunch of strangers who arrived, from a broad mixed bag of backgrounds, at the quayside, intent on giving nothing less than their all.

      Every applicant for the race underwent an identical training programme and no matter if it was a crew member’s first, tenth or one-hundredth time on a boat, we were all starting as equal. I was amazed at the numbers who had no sailing experience at all yet threw themselves at the course with real gusto.

      The training was designed to be as tough as possible, but the harder the instructors made things, the more inspirational the performance from this unique group of people. No matter whether it was three in the morning or three in the afternoon. No matter whether we were soaking wet, tired or confused. No matter whether someone was making a lunge to the rail to be gloriously sick in front of the rest of the crew or making a fool of themselves by cocking up a manoeuvre. The only thing that existed on board was a committed level of support and a desire to help each other through whatever surprise came next.

      A larger-than-life gynaecologist, used to the high proportion of teenage mothers Newcastle produces, would break off her conversation, lean over the side, throw up, make a typical nurse-like comment about lunch being just as good on the second tasting, laugh enthusiastically and then look for the next job to do. Down below, three university students sat in a line, looking for all the world like the three wise monkeys. With impeccable manners, they politely asked if perhaps the bucket might possibly be passed down to them, before burying their head and adding to the content. The retching sound from one would set off his neighbour, while the third, rather than simply letting supper go on to the deck, would make a polite request for the bucket to be passed on in readiness.

      Through sail change after sail change, working twenty-four hours a day with just a few hours of snatched sleep, we pounded through the waters of the Atlantic until we were exhausted. Exhausted from the physical exercise, exhausted from the vomiting, exhausted from the amount of information we were being bombarded with and exhausted from the lack of a full night in a stable bed.

      Yet, exhilarated and completely alive too, alert and more awake than I had been in years, I was inspired by the supporting, laughing, encouraging help that lifted moods and got us working together as one. Strangers became brothers and by the time we set foot back on dry land, the group had become a really unified team.

      Social barriers vanished and I was deeply, deeply inspired by the generosity of the personalities I shared my training with. After just one week, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I had made the right choice and, with life looking far less jaded, I returned to the office with a definite spring in my step.

      I was humbled once more, but this time in the corporate world, as my day of leaving drew closer. After so long with one company I wondered if I might suddenly crumble in an emotional heap when the moment came to say goodbye. Setting that process in motion, I had written to all the contacts that filled the bulging pages of my Filofax, from Ackerley via Lichfield to Young. I had been amazed at their responses, which ranged from the ‘I always knew you were barking (Ackerley, A.) to ‘Wow, what an adventure – you’ll be following in the steps of my great-great-great-grandfather (Lichfield, P.) to ‘What a sad day for the company and what a great moment for you’ (Young, R.). I was applauded for my decision to think big and brave, rather than make the more predictable step of safely sidling from one desk to another, and congratulated for taking a dive into the unknown.

      Much of this sentiment came from individuals for whom I had a huge respect, having followed their own adventures with ill-concealed envy via e-mails, postcards and letters dispatched from an exotic collection of foreign fields over the years. Chris Bonington and Ran Fiennes urged me onwards and upwards. Mirella Ricciardi, the artist behind the seminal photographic book Vanishing Africa, grasped my decision with a passion that was frightening. Judy Leden, the women’s world hang-gliding champion, wrote a dedication in her book encouraging me to ‘go on taking risks’ and giggled down the phone when I told her I was. Adrian Thurley – another pilot, ex-Red Arrows – was equally thrilled at the prospect, as was the company president, who wrote a personal letter of warm support from his eyrie high up in a glass tower in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo.

      If these responses were humbling, the icing on the cake came in August 2000 – a couple of months before the start of the race, when I was asked out to dinner by my advertising agency. We met at Kettners restaurant in Soho and it was clear that something was up. Jeremy Bowles, our account director, was full of over-the-top innocence and bonhomie. Sarah Gold, our account handler, could barely conceal her excitement and my work colleague Sara, who was set to inherit my day-to-day problems, puffed nervously on more cigarettes than usual.

      These people had kept me sane for the past year as we fought our advertising battles and they were all trusted friends. Despite my agency’s reputation as one of the most creative in Europe, the most imaginative nicknames they had managed to create for each other were ‘Bowlsie’ and ‘Goldie’.

      Bowlsie and I had worked together for twelve years and had been thick as thieves through all of them. Not only had we worked hard to create a whole series of award-winning campaigns, we had played hard too.

      Given such a close bond, I guessed that Kettners was not going to be a quiet drink and an early night, but was still unsure what their nervousness was hiding. After a studied yawn from Sara and yet another whispered conversation on her mobile, it was suggested that perhaps we might move on to Groucho’s for another drink.

      Rumbled.

      I knew that none of them was a member and the club has a distinctly superior attitude to visiting guests. I knew this because Bowlsie and I had been kicked out a couple of years previously for daring to use a mobile phone from the club’s dining room. It was apparently strictly against the rules.

      Once in the club, my posse of friends urged me up some back stairs and then, rather curiously, shoved open the door of the Gents and pushed me in. The curious part was that they followed – girls as well as boy – and then started to undress me.

      I had a panic-laden vision of being pushed naked on to a stage where a series of strippers would set about humiliating me as my mates cheered. It was not something I really wanted to endure and a good scuffle in the confines of a pair of urinals

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