Rob Barton #ASPWTheNextJourney

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TRANSCRIPT

Program announcement (00:00):

Welcome to the Next Journey, the Adventure Travel Podcast. With me, Andrew St Pierre White. 

ASPW (00:08):

Welcome everybody to the next journey. I have something very special today. Rob Barton. Hello, Rob.

Rob Barton (00:15):

Hello, Andrew. Hi. Pleased to be here.

ASPW (00:17):

Those of you who know my show will know that I do some fairly, some would regard them as adventurous expeditions into the unknown. Well, when I think about what Rob has done, actually those expeditions, my expeditions pale into insignificant. I’m just

Rob Barton (00:37):

Not sure about that.

ASPW (00:40):

Rob, what have you just done in a nutshell?

Rob Barton (00:42):

Well, in a nutshell, I just rode from Australia Carnarvon in Australia to Tanga in Tanzania. So yeah, solo unsupported row across the ocean.

ASPW (00:54):

So you basically, I’ve rode single-handed unsupported across the Indian Ocean.

Rob Barton (01:00):

That’s right.

ASPW (01:01):

How many days did that take you?

Rob Barton (01:03):

I was at sea for 86 days,

ASPW (01:06):

86 days. I look back on my longest expedition of 66 days, and I think to myself, by the end of it, I was closed dead and I was in a comfortable car with an air conditioner.

Rob Barton (01:19):

Well, I was on the ocean with an air, which is naturally air conditioned because the ocean’s a wonderful leveller of temperature. So the sea temperature was a fairly consistent 24, 25 degrees, and the air temperature for pretty much the entire time I was out there was at that temperature. It was only when I was close to land that I was a bit cold. So both on departure and arrival, I had to put a shirt on, but otherwise I didn’t have to wear the only occasions where there was bad weather that I put a jacket on, but basically didn’t need to wear anything.

ASPW (01:51):

Before we get to that, this podcast is sponsored by Egon. Egon, the producer of equipment for building your four-wheel drive, your camper, your trailer, and of course, the heart of those builds. Whether you are doing an electrical installation, Egon DC Hub will save hours, if not days of work, building your vehicle. And the econ water hub, likewise, with the plumbing shower, freshwater systems, systems that Rob didn’t have in his canoe.

Rob Barton (02:24):

Sadly not. Yeah. No.

ASPW (02:27):

Okay. How long did it take you? You told me. Okay. Preparation. Okay. The most important part about preparation, as far as I was concerned, is how on earth did you explain this to your children?

Rob Barton (02:41):

Yeah, that was a challenge, actually. And I have to say, when I met up with, my daughter picked me up from the airport on arrival, and we were chatting, and I didn’t realise this, I mean, she was concerned about my departing initially, and then when she said goodbye to me at, she told me later that she thought that that was a final goodbye and that she wouldn’t be seeing me again. So she was pretty distraught, saying goodbye to me in Carnarvon. Wow, okay. I hadn’t appreciated that she was that concerned. I thought I’d put her mind at rest because I’d given her lots and lots of stories about other people that have done ocean rows, and whilst there have been the odd loss, they’ve mostly been because people have fallen overboard and not been tethered to their boat. So they’ve basically, the boat’s gone sailing on and they’ve been left behind, so the boat’s been found safe and well, but they haven’t. So I always made a point of being tethered, but that was quite a revelation to me that my daughter was quite, so

ASPW (03:42):

To me, that’s cold comfort because you’ve actually said, okay, here are the risks, and this is what has happened to other people. Oh, dad, what happens if you forget one morning or something happens? And so there must’ve been more to it than that, I’m guessing?

Rob Barton (03:59):

Well, I think it’s lack of, it is the worry of the unknown. Now, for me, this was the first time in a rowing boat. I’d done very little rowing and was basically pretty inexperienced in that respect. But I’ve done a lot. I’ve done a lot of sailing, so I’m comfortable on the water. So for me, it was never a, I wouldn’t have done it if I thought I wasn’t going to come back. Yeah. I was very confident that I was going to make it, and I was really, really surprised that Katie was so concerned and that she thought that I wasn’t going to make it.

ASPW (04:31):

So during your trip, you must have had communications? I did, yes. With your family. So what communications device just sat phones or what was your

Rob Barton (04:39):

Yeah, I had two SAT phones. I had the basic Iridium Go and then the Iridium Go exec and had great sponsorship from Pivot on that. So they gave me airtime contracts for both devices. The Iridium go was that, the basic one was fantastic. I had an external aerial for that, so I could use that pretty much at any time. The Go Exec was better insofar as it supported higher bandwidth. I could send back short videos and pictures, but it was a brand new hardware only just being released when I left. There was no external aerial available. I believe it is available now, so I could only put that on deck to use when it was fair weather, and it was a bit of hassle. So I didn’t use that as much as I would’ve liked.

ASPW (05:24):

So I understand we’re, we’re going to skip forward for a moment. I understand that you’ve got some other plans for another expedition, which we’ll get to towards the end, but I want dips on connections with you. I want to watch those videos because I was actually, while you were away knowing that you were on the, I was kind of trying to picture this endless blue sea, these mountain, because when you’re sitting, am I right? When you’re sitting on the water that waves, even small ones, are completely blocking the horizon?

Rob Barton (05:52):

Well, the horizon comes and goes. You’re absolutely right. Yeah. So one minute, you’ve got the most amazing view of the entire ocean spread out before you, and the next minute you’ve got basically a wall of water in front of you, and on big, big waves, it’s pretty daunting. But the boat I was on, I mean, I had huge, well, I developed, I didn’t at the beginning, but I’d developed a lot of confidence in it because you’d see this massive waves coming towards you, and your heart would be in your mouth. You’d be just, well, I was scared, but there’s no other way to put it. So I was pretty scared. But then the boat would just rise up on these massive waves and gently come to the top of them and gently back down the other side. Describe

ASPW (06:34):

The boat to me the size, and obviously I’m relative to the size of the waves and that kind of thing. Well,

Rob Barton (06:40):

Compared to the size of the waves, it’s like a cork in a bath with a child having a wonderful time splashing everywhere. Yeah, I am totally insignificant on the ocean to the point where big ships, there were a couple of occasions where I had big ships that I could see on my electronic systems, and I radioed them up to make sure they’d seen me and they could see me on the other electronic systems, but they couldn’t see me physically.

ASPW (07:11):

Just because you have some kind of transponder on your, bleeping out your location, like an aircraft transponder on your boat.

Rob Barton (07:18):

That’s exactly right. Yeah. Yeah, because my big, not biggest concern, but one of the concerns always for a single handed person is that you get run over. So because you can’t be on watch 24 by seven,

ASPW (07:31):

And even if you were on watch, you would obviously have flares with you to Yeah,

Rob Barton (07:36):

Yes. You would have that, and different types of flares. So you have white flares that you set off so people can see you, and you have both parachute and handheld flares, and then red flares for distress.

ASPW (07:48):

Okay. We’re going to get to that in a minute. You’re going to describe the boats to me, but you’re also going to help me with, you’ve got those flares. Are they next to you? Would you ever need them in an emergency? Oh, I need the flare and I need it right now, that kind of thing?

Rob Barton (08:04):

No, I don’t think so. It’s always hard to say, but I didn’t envisage any circumstances where I would need access to it that quickly. I did have a grab bag, which had flares in it, so if I had to get out of the boat in seconds or minutes, there was a bag that I had ready packed, ready to go, that had a variety of different types of flares in it, as well as a little handheld water maker for desalination and a few other emergency bits of kit.

ASPW (08:35):

Okay. Yeah. Alright. I’m very interested in that. Emergency bits of kit, get back to the boat. Describe the boats to me.

Rob Barton (08:42):

So the boat is just over 20 feet long, so it won’t quite fit in a 20 foot container for shipping. But yeah, so just over 20 foot long. It’s got a cabin at the front, which extends back underneath the rowing deck. So when I sleep in the middle of the boat basically is a rowing deck, which has got only just higher than the water outside. So there’s about a foot of 12 inches, 30 centimetres above the water level. And as a result of that water frequently sweeps across the deck. But yeah, so you’re sitting on the, so you sit on that rowing deck, and then there’s a very small after cabin for storage at the back of the boat, but primarily it’s the forward cabin that comes back underneath that rowing deck, which is where I slept and kept the essential things that I needed to keep dry.

ASPW (09:28):

Your location in the boat, are you kind of in the middle of the boat?

Rob Barton (09:31):

For rowing? Yes,

ASPW (09:32):

For rowing. That makes sense to me that you’re in the, because that would be your centre of gravity as it were, centre of thrust or whatever you called it.

Rob Barton (09:39):

Yeah, yeah.

ASPW (09:39):

Alright. And you are steering with your feet?

Rob Barton (09:44):

No, so there are steering lines that go back to a tiller, effectively connected to the rudder and those steering lines. They’re C pleated, so you would make minor adjustments to them, and then basically you can adjust that steering again with your OS by rowing more on one side than the other. So

ASPW (10:04):

It’s proper rowing boat rowing, that’s how you row a rowing boat. You do more on one side than the other, and it’ll turn not with your feet. So you have like a trim tab?

Rob Barton (10:14):

Yes. Effectively

ASPW (10:16):

On your rudder with cleats?

Rob Barton (10:18):

Yes. Yeah. Now I did have autopilot as well, and I took multiple autopilot, well, the mechanical bit of the autopilot, I took four rams because I knew that they would fail, and the first one failed after 10 days. Now knowing that this was not knowing, but expecting this to take 180 days, I didn’t have spares for them to be failing after 10 days. So I stopped using the autopilot after 10 days, and I did it entirely with manual steering until I got to Madagascar, and then I commissioned one of the spares at that point to go around the, because going around Madagascar is quite hairy, so I wanted autopilot for that. Oh,

ASPW (10:58):

Right. Okay. So you say you have an autopilot, is it linked to A G P S? You’re obviously using G P S for your navigation. Yes. So your autopilot is then helping you. Is it telling you which way to steer or helping you steer?

Rob Barton (11:14):

It steers completely for me. So I disconnect the steering lines and I set the course up and say, I want you to steer due west, or whatever it is. And that’s what it does. You

ASPW (11:25):

Just pull and it steers

Rob Barton (11:27):

It.

ASPW (11:27):

That’s right. And it counteracts current. It counteracts your current, your wind and everything that’s affecting you. Oh,

Rob Barton (11:32):

It can do, so there’s two settings you can put the autopilot on. One is to track two, a specific line that you’ve drawn across the map effectively, and then if there’s current or wind taking you off, it’ll bring you back on that line. But that is really heavy on the actual motor that is driving the, because you get blown a hundred metres off the line and it works to get you a hundred metres back onto the line. So the more power effective way of using it, not power is a big issue for me, but the more power effective way of using it is to just give it a compass course to steer and accept that you’ll drift from the line. Oh. And

ASPW (12:11):

Then correct it the next day because you’ve figured out I have drifted this far over the last five hours, therefore that’s my correction. And then you set it and you’ll be making your way.

Rob Barton (12:21):

Yes, that’s right. So it’s a little bit more of a squiggle, but it’s much less power hungry and it lasts longer.

ASPW (12:30):

So you’re saying that most of it you did manually without or this aid I did. Yeah. So how did you do that? What was your daily routine of setting a compass heading and give me more info.

Rob Barton (12:42):

So look, I mean, I did a lot of research before I left, and there were some significant variations in, so there’d been seven solo crossings of the Indian ocean before. None of them to mainland Africa. I was the first to achieve that. All of them had stopped at islands along the way. So Reunion, Madagascar, Mauritius, and the Seychelles were the four pre previous destinations, but significant variances in time. Some of them had been as quick as under 60 days, I think to get to reunion was one person, but most of the times were sort of a hundred, 130 days some significant times, which is why I thought I was going to take best part of six months. So the research I did, identifying all these variances, I went to see the oceanography team at uwa, a professor Phil Watson gave me huge amounts of his time and assigned a PhD student and some undergraduates as well to do a whole load of research.

(13:35):

So they looked at the weather as it has been, sorry, as it had been over the last 20 years. And then they built a model that said, okay, let’s put in the weather forecast as it’s going to be for the next 10 days. Put that into the model with the weather as it had been for the prior 20 years, and said, okay, based on where you are right now, we think you should take this course for the next 12 hours until you rerun the model. And we could have rerun the model multiple times a day. It’s quite a slow boat. So once a day was sufficient for us. You

ASPW (14:08):

Say slow, how slow?

Rob Barton (14:11):

Well, I mean, the average speed that we did, I keep saying we, because always thinking of me and the boat, but

ASPW (14:17):

Still, you had a crew also back there helping you, so I

Rob Barton (14:21):

Had Sure support. Exactly right. So yeah, so Neil is a mate from surf club and he kindly volunteered, but he was an incredible support. So yeah, I mean, he drove me up to the start line. We had text exchanges every single day, and we spoke every four or five days on the phone. So he was amazing. But yeah, so he was running this data model for me, but to come back to the speed of the boat, about two, two and a half knots, I think was what I averaged from start to finish. And the difference that I made in rowing, because a big part of it is getting the boat in the right position. So just as a cork sits on the water and gets blown by the wind, so did the boat, the boats, without my rowing, in normal sort of conditions, we’d do about one and a half knots. And then with my rowing, we’d get about an extra knot, knot and a half, and if surfing down waves so I could line it up to surf down a wave, then we could do much, much better. But sadly, those opportunities were not as many as I would’ve liked, but there were some great days surfing down waves. Yeah.

ASPW (15:22):

How did you keep yourself occupied? This is incredibly very, very repetitive thing that you’re doing. How do you keep your mind occupied?

Rob Barton (15:30):

I actually found that really easy. I mean, I took no music. I took no audio

ASPW (15:35):

Books. No,

Rob Barton (15:36):

No, none at all. No. And it was a conscious decision not to, I mean, I’m not big into music anyway, but I normally, I just love listening to the radio that keeps me entertained. But I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to experience the nature side of it, if you like. I find the ocean is really stimulating. It’s consistently changing. You think of the billions and billions of patterns that you could have, and there just doesn’t repeat every time you look at it. There’s waves of different angles coming from you at different places, and it talks to you the noises of the ocean. It just, yeah, I just found it wonderful.

ASPW (16:18):

I can in a way relates to it, because when I go into the desert, if I’m counted, I don’t listen to music and I don’t listen to an audio book, I will just sit and listen to the desert. And because you are not using your mind, the whole thing is that actually your brain is starting to do different things. You start noticing things that you would never notice. You hear things that you would never notice. And so I dunno if I could do that for 80 plus days, but that’s amazing. So at no time did you actually feel bored? It doesn’t sound like you did.

Rob Barton (16:50):

No, no, not at all. No. I mean was always, well, rowing was pretty much consistent, but even outside of the rowing, there was no end of jobs to do on the boat with running the water maker and keeping things clean and

ASPW (17:02):

Tie things up. Let’s talk about jobs on the boat. You are now preparing for your night, for example. So let’s take a 24 hour period, you’re preparing the sun’s going down. Okay. So you obviously road at night. What was your kind of schedule of

Rob Barton (17:19):

Yeah, I did row at night occasionally, and particularly towards the end when I had to get across certain currents. But up to getting to Madagascar, my night rowing was, you could probably measure in hours rather than days. It was minimal. There was no, the whole point of this was to get the boat into the right weather systems to allow the wind and the currents to take me in the right direction. So I would typically row for nine to 10 hours during the day, over a 12 to 14 hour period with breaks and doing other jobs during the day. But usually at night come sunset or just prior to sunset, I would normally have a wash, get rid of all the salt water on me. And so you

ASPW (18:01):

Get rid of the salt water on you, but you only have salt water to wash with.

Rob Barton (18:05):

Well, I had a water maker. I said I keep calling it a water maker. It doesn’t actually make water. It takes the salt out of the seawater. Desalinate, desalinate. Yeah. Okay. Right. But they’re widely known as water makers.

ASPW (18:15):

Okay. So then your other preparations for a night’s sleep during the night, you’re just going to bob and float in the ocean and then wake up and say, oh, where have I got to now? Is that how it works?

Rob Barton (18:28):

Yeah, effectively, I would spend probably a good 30 minutes playing with the tiller lines, the steering lines, trying to trim the boat so that wherever the wind was coming from, it was optimising, going to give me the best course. And sometimes I’d have to get up in the night and retrim the tiller lines, because if the wind changed either in its intensity or in its direction, then I might suddenly find myself going in a different direction. So the tiller lines were the most important thing to get right once inside the boat. And you couldn’t go in there very much during the day. It was just too hot. But at nighttime you get in, it was still hot. So I would typically sit by the hatch and have my hand on the hatch ready to close it at a moment’s notice, because you get hit by a wave and water just comes straight in the boat.

(19:17):

So wet bedding was pretty common. So yeah, so for my night routine, it would be have a wash, dry off as much as I could outside, depending on how rough it was. And then get down below and eat something. And sometimes I’d eat on deck whilst rowing, but I say sometimes mostly actually I’d eat on deck whilst rowing, and then I’d go down below and spend an hour or so by the hatch with trying to keep it cool and trying to dry off in the air. Then I shut the hatch and spend an hour or so writing my journal, which I send back via Satcoms to get published on my Facebook page. Fantastic. And then I get to sleep,

ASPW (19:53):

Rewind us a little bit. The effect of the wind. This is not a sailing boat, it’s a rowing boat. So you are saying that you can trim out the rowing boat, so the wind has optimal effects, but is there directional stability? There isn’t a sailboat,

Rob Barton (20:11):

So as long as the wind is after the beam. So that means if your boat is heading due west, which would’ve been nice and the wind is coming from, well, if it’s coming from the east, that’s great. But that happened rarely. Most of the wind I had was from right angles to the boat, and that put me into a position where the seas were coming at me, well say from right angle. So beam seas, beam wind. Well, I suffered really badly from seasickness early on, and that’s just because the motion of the boat was horrible because on a normal sailing boat, as you say, you get that up and down motion on a rowing boat. You get the up and down as well as this horrible sideways wiggling where you are sitting there and you’re literally rocking from side to side. So that wasn’t comfortable. So as long as the wind was after the beam, there’s a bit of windage on the boat. It’s like if you chuck a plastic bottle in the sea, if there’s wind, it blows. If there isn’t, it’ll stay where it is. And just drift with current. Yes. There’s these rowing boats, they sit on top of the water. There’s very little underneath them. They’re flat bottomed. So as long as there is a little bit of wind, they will, it’s very slow. One and a half knots is not exactly moving.

ASPW (21:25):

Well, it’s a percentage of your forward speed. So one and a half knots actually. I mean, it could be 50% of your overall speed.

Rob Barton (21:31):

Yeah, yeah. I mean, if I hadn’t rowed, I mean, I did do a bit of maths on this, and I reckon that my rowing probably contributed maybe 15 miles a day. So if I was only rowing for 86 days, that’s what, 12? 1300 miles and it was close to a 5,000 mile crossing. So the wind blew me the other three and a half. My job was really to make sure that the boat was in the right place to take advantage of the wind that was blowing me head north or south, to get into the right wind system that’s coming, that’s going to blow me west. Okay.

ASPW (22:06):

So it is a sailing boat in a way. It’s a sailing boat

Rob Barton (22:09):

In a way. It is, yeah. Although we’re not allowed any sails.

ASPW (22:14):

No,

Rob Barton (22:14):

I understand that. That’s just the windage of the boat. Yes. But if you just put a sailing boat on the ocean and take all the sails down, it still gets blown along. Even a motor boat, any boat on the ocean will get blown along just slower than if it’s got sails. Yeah.

ASPW (22:28):

Your seasickness, how long did your sea sickness last?

Rob Barton (22:32):

I mean, to the point that I was throwing up, it was the first few days, and I still dunno today how much I was affected by gas poisoning. In fact, this might be something very relevant to your normal audience. I used a jet boil, which is a great camping stove.

ASPW (22:48):

It’s propane or butane,

Rob Barton (22:51):

I think it’s butane.

ASPW (22:53):

Yeah, it’s poisonous stuff

Rob Barton (22:54):

And it leaks.

ASPW (22:56):

Oh, okay.

Rob Barton (22:57):

So I took a jet boil. I had ten four hundred gramme gas cylinders, and I had them stowed in my sleeping compartment, which was a big mistake. And after the first one ran out through use, I went to get another one and found three of them completely empty, and they’d leaked into my sleeping compartment. Now,

ASPW (23:17):

Never seen that before. These are the small canisters, small

Rob Barton (23:20):

Canisters

ASPW (23:20):

You buy on the camping stores,

Rob Barton (23:23):

All from Anaconda. And so three of ’em are empty. So at that point, I moved the remaining seven of them into the after cabin, which is just for storage only. And then when I went to get another spare one from, in fact, it wasn’t until I got to Tanzania that I went and checked them again. And I found another, I think it was two or three had also fully emptied, completely empty. I dunno whether I just got a bad batch or whether or not they don’t like the movement on the ocean or what it was. But for them to have leaked, I was really disappointed. And it could have been a whole lot worse. I mean, three of them to leak.

ASPW (24:01):

It could have ended your trip. Butanes are really quite toxic. I mean, propane is actually okay to use na as far as I know to use in a confined space, even inside. But butane or butane propane mix is not

Rob Barton (24:15):

So

ASPW (24:16):

You had a butane, probably butane propane mix in your cabin. You breathing it in.

Rob Barton (24:23):

That’s right. So how much gas poison I suffered from, I don’t know, but it’s

ASPW (24:27):

Probably more toxic when it’s burnt than it is coming straight up, I’m guessing. I dunno, I’m not qualified to say, but I’m making that suggestion. But that could have ended your trip. That sounds

Rob Barton (24:37):

It could. And if I didn’t use them inside at all, I only used them on, I know that’s not true. I did towards the end, I think in bad weather. I used it once inside, but mostly I used them outside. But had I tried to light it inside the cabin, I mean that could have just, well, boat gone. Me gone. Yeah,

ASPW (24:56):

No, it would’ve been really, really catastrophic.

Rob Barton (24:58):

It would. So the message I guess is if anyone’s using these things is just don’t keep the gas containers anywhere where you’re

ASPW (25:05):

Sleeping? Well, I do and I have for years.

Rob Barton (25:07):

Make sure it’s in a ventilated space, I

ASPW (25:09):

Guess, because obviously a propane tank in a caravan or something like that has to be stored outside for exactly that reason. If there’s a leak, are those small ones? Yeah, first time I’ve heard of them leaking. So I’ll do some investigations actually.

Rob Barton (25:23):

That’s really interesting. Yeah, I was shocked.

ASPW (25:25):

Yeah. So how did you then deal with your lack of fuel?

Rob Barton (25:29):

Well, I budgeted for 180 days, and I finished in 86. Okay. So I was okay. You

ASPW (25:37):

Were

Rob Barton (25:37):

Okay. And obviously I packed a couple of spares as well, and I’d also allowed for three hot meals a day, and I only ended up having two.

ASPW (25:45):

Tell me about the food that you were preparing for yourself. Obviously no fridge and no cold beer. Carry on.

Rob Barton (25:52):

Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. So the food I had initially, I really struggled with it because I was seasick and then I was eating food, forcing it down basically. And when you force food down when you’re sick, it just tastes horrible. And it continued to taste horrible for quite a long time. But towards the end, I actually really started enjoying it. So it’s all dehydrated food, little 140 gramme packs add less, slightly less or two.

ASPW (26:19):

Are they dehydrated or freeze

Rob Barton (26:21):

Dried, dehydrated. All from Rads Nutrition, 800 calories per pack. And I was eating three of those a day. So breakfast was just add cold water to them. There was quite a nice mix of, yeah, breakfast was good actually. And then the evening meals or the lunchtime, add boiling water, leave it for five minutes and eat it straight out of the pack. So no washing up, just a spoon.

ASPW (26:47):

I imagine washing up is also quite easy. Just lean over the side of the boat in the current, wish it around a bit, and

Rob Barton (26:56):

Yeah, basically, yeah, so that’s what I did. I mean, the one issue was salt water, of course, is your stainless steel spoons rust, horribly. So I mean, if you’re using them every day, they don’t. But if you have a spare that you put in, which I did, and when you come to find the spare, you’ve got to get a scour out and get all the rust off it. But yeah, there’s no such thing as stainless steel I’ve discovered.

ASPW (27:19):

Yes, I know. Even stainless steel, only the very, very highest grade stainless steels can withstand saltwater for very long. Yeah. So your food was very repetitive, or did you actually have quite a nice variation of it?

Rob Barton (27:35):

So I only had two options of breakfast, so that changed every other day. The other meals, I had six different varieties every three days I had the same thing, but it was okay.

ASPW (27:46):

Did you count your calories? Were you quite scientific about it?

Rob Barton (27:50):

I was, before I left, well, the first thing I did before I left was put on weight. I bulked up, I put on my normal weight’s around 75 kilos. I got up to 98, and now I’m back down to 80. So I lost best part of 18 kilos on the journey over three months. That’ll be the title of my new book. How to lose 18 Kilos, kilo

ASPW (28:13):

In one, very, very difficult way.

Rob Barton (28:17):

No, I was going to miss that. I wanted to sell. So anyway, that was a big source of energy for me. It was just burning off my own fat. But then, so I did a whole meal plan before I left, which was aiming at about five and a half thousand calories a day. But I never ate more than 4,000 because I just struggled to eat that much. So as well as the dried food that I had, I also had, I took lots of nuts, fruitcake, and chocolate.

ASPW (28:50):

Right, okay. And water. Did you measure your water consumption? I know you, I’ve known you for several years when you walked in for the interview, you are well tanned. And as much as you say, well, the weather wasn’t too bad, it wasn’t probably very kind on you. Water intake must’ve been really critical for you to get right.

Rob Barton (29:12):

Look, I mean, the thing with rowing for 10 hours a day is you are rowing at the easiest way to compare. It’s at a walking pace. You’re not going, I mean, the middle of the day is sure sweating a bit, but mostly you’re just, you’re rowing at a relatively sedate pace, so you’re not profusely sweating as you would do if it was a one hour sprint or something. So water, yes, I did measure it because I had to measure it every day for, I was filling up a specific number of water bottles every day. So I knew what I was consuming. And generally I was getting through, I was drinking about three and a half litres a day, occasionally more if it was a really hot day. But that was about the average. And then I was, I’ve allowed myself one and a half to two litres a day for washing. That was my shower.

ASPW (30:02):

So you were obviously very organised and you had planned very, very well and you knew what you were up against, but the other part that you probably couldn’t plan for, and it’s also one of the reasons why you actually did the trip. How do you control yourself mentally or mental health? To me, the physical part is one side. The mental part is probably tougher. Certainly with me it would probably be tougher. How was that with you

Rob Barton (30:31):

Generally? I’m pretty good on my own. I’ve got lots of kids. I love being around them, but equally, I’m happy

ASPW (30:38):

In my own company. But one of your motivations for doing it was to support a mental health charity. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about that?

Rob Barton (30:45):

Yeah, yeah, sure. So a couple of years ago, one of my daughters had some mental health challenges, I guess is probably a good way to put it. And she’s in a much better place today. I am pleased to say a couple of years on. But at the time, two years ago, it was fairly traumatic and coming through that experience, I mean, I have to say I was not a very nice person when it came to looking at mental health issues prior to this incident. I was not at all understanding, had very little empathy despite the fact that I’d lost a grandmother to mental health issues, who I never knew that was prior to being born. And my other grandmother also had mental health, but it wasn’t talked about. So yeah, I came from a family that was very much case of pull yourself together and get on with life.

(31:31):

And I was having grown up with that attitude. That’s how I was. I had really no empathy at all yet. I just didn’t get it. And then for my daughter to go through this experience, I’ve learned a lot in the last two and a half years. And I’m pleased to say I’m a little bit more empathetic today and I have a much better understanding. And anyway, going through this experience with my daughter, I came across Zero to Heroes, quite by chance. A friend of mine went to work for them and told me all about them and what they were doing. And Zero Hero is an amazing mental health charity. Their focus is entirely around prevention rather than cure. Well, there is no cure in many cases. So they run educational programmes for youth and adolescents. They run camps, they go into schools. So there’s a huge amount of work that they do. So when I came across them, I thought, right, well, I’m going to do this to raise money for them. And so far, we’re up to pretty close to $120,000

ASPW (32:29):

Because I have three daughters. We had some challenges. The details are not important, but I can empathise with what you went through. I can understand that. And for me, I was kind of numbed by it. And you have to rely on professionals. And sometimes relying on those professionals is a difficult thing to do. But you obviously took it one step further and you said, okay, I’m going to do this great thing, but I need to actually give back.

Rob Barton (32:57):

Look, I have to say, I’d actually planned to do this before any signs with Jess, and I was going to do it for a different charity. But that changed obviously. Okay. And look, I think one other thing I’d just add to that is when I started this row, I was a couple of days into it, and I started this row really for back to selfish reasons. I wanted a personal adventure. I wanted to go out and do something for me. I’ve been rearing children for 30 years. It was just all, just about all grown up. I thought it was about time. I had some fun. So this was something for me that I was doing. It wasn’t for anybody else. And then a couple of days into it, I was feeling so ill and I was over it, and I actually turned around and started rowing back and a couple of hours into rowing back.

(33:47):

I had time to think and realised that actually I wasn’t really, whilst I might be over my own personal adventure, it was bigger than me. I was doing this as well to raise money for charity. And I think that’s a key thing is if whatever you do, if you can find something that is bigger than you, there’s a good chance you’ll see it through. Whereas when you’re just doing it for yourself, it’s too easy to give in. So it was great having that extra motivation and reason for doing it. And so yes, I turned around again and carried on.

ASPW (34:17):

Somehow I can completely, those of you who know me will know. I did a trip in 2008 and I was my first big solo expedition, and I was going to drive across the Kalahari and I did it. And I was confronted on, I think the third night in the wilderness. I was parked next to my vehicle doors open, laptops starting to do my story for my magazine, and the lion roared. But the lion wasn’t, normally when you hear a lion roar, it’s, oh, there’s some lions in the distance. No, he was there. So it was this, my blood ran cold and I kind of had to stop myself. And the first thing I did was actually, I leaned over and I pressed the record button on my camera. I thought, if it eats me, if it attacks me, at least there’ll be a record. Honestly, that was my, because my end goal was this selfish reason to cross the Kalahari I wanted to feel, and I didn’t take any SAT phones, no personal locator beacons, nothing, because I wanted to feel that, that experience of being utterly alone without possible help from anybody else.

(35:30):

And I wanted to experience that. And I did. But the following day I had some tyre failures and I actually thought to myself at the time, stop right now. Stop what you’re doing. Set up camp. I saw on the map that there was a clearing and 12 Ks on drove set up camp and sat and literally sat, what am I going to do? Is the smart thing to do? Who’s going to, who am I letting down? Yeah, but is this too risky now? So there was all that kind of thing. And I realised actually the chances of me succeeding this trip are very low. The tyres had failed, the lion had scared me, but when the tyres failed, it was you saying, I have no more gas. They’ve all leaked. I can’t cook a meal, I can’t prepare the meals. I can’t eat dried meals.

(36:17):

I need some way of, okay, do I carry on? No, it’s crazy to carry on. But that end goal was to do it, do it for the magazine, do it for me. And so the next year I got and did the exact same trip again, but this time prepared properly. And it was a huge success and one of the most enjoyable experiences. So that was that extra thing. So that’s my story. I mean, it’s not crossing the notion over 80 days. That trip I think was a total of 14 days. But I can empathise with that. Needing that reason beyond just you. There was another reason for it.

Rob Barton (37:01):

It makes it easier actually. I think when it’s because it’s so easy to give in on your own. It’s so

ASPW (37:06):

Easy.

Rob Barton (37:07):

It’s so easy. No end of examples. I’m sure that I could come up with times where I’ve just thought, oh no, I don’t want to do this anymore.

ASPW (37:14):

And that’s the time when that happens. That’s the time where you just say, stop everything, camp rest. Let your mind settle down. Okay, now we’re going to think about this logically. And then the motivations of why you’re doing it come back and give you a nudge in the right direction. And the other part of it is saying, well, you can actually do this. There’s nothing stopping you doing this. And if there is something stopping you, it’s a physical thing that is putting your life in danger. If that’s the case, then it’s wise to stop.

Rob Barton (37:46):

Yes.

ASPW (37:47):

Yeah, quite. But if it’s just your own little, oh, mental thing, then

Rob Barton (37:52):

I’ve got a friend whose wife is completely acrophobic for her. Getting out of the house and going, doing the shopping is a major, major challenge for her. And if she was only cooking for herself, she would probably die of starvation. But the fact that she has to get up and support her family and do it, she does it. She gets out. And so it’s, again, it’s back to that external motivation, if you like. It’s finding a reason that’s bigger than you. And for her, it’s supporting her family. Her family.

ASPW (38:20):

Yeah. So when you were coming towards the end, you went around Madagascar because you said you landed in Tanzania.

Rob Barton (38:30):

In Tanzania, yeah. Okay.

ASPW (38:32):

So that last couple of days, you must have, must have seen the finishing line. How did that change you mentally?

Rob Barton (38:40):

So I didn’t actually see Madagascar, so I came up along the coast of it. So I, Raphael was the first struggle to get round the southern point of that group of islands. I sort of set that as my first target, if you like. And I was on sea anchor for a while, waiting for the right weather to get rounded. Eventually got wind from the right direction, managed to get rounded. And then going up along Madagascar, there was a lot of hype about Madagascar, which I think a lot of this is fully justified, but there’s a compression zone around the northern tip of it where currents coming up from the Arctic and winds as well compress going around that northern tip, very strong currents, three four, not currents, big winds. Big waves, big swell. And it sweeps around the corner, and if you’re in the right part of the current, it will take you. It then moves from that sort of northerly to westerly direction. But I got into the wrong part of the current and ended up going too far north. And then the current splits with part of the current going northwest and part of it going north to Somalia. And the prior year there was a rower who ended up in Somalia, and he was

ASPW (39:53):

Not an ideal place to be. He

Rob Barton (39:55):

Had a really tough time. I didn’t realise this, but he was actually monitoring my progress on my Facebook page. And he got in touch with Neil, my shore manager, and was very concerned that I was going to end up going the same way. So he was sort of giving us lots of encouragement to make sure we got as west as we possibly could without getting into that northerly current. And you can see from, there’s a predict wind and windy. You’ve got these systems where you can actually look within in they’ve, they’ve got infrared cameras and they show you where the currents are. So you can put your boat position in.

ASPW (40:30):

What programme is that? I’ve got windy on my flying apps. Right. Is this also for currents? Yes. A similar thing for currents. Yep.

Rob Barton (40:38):

Okay. Yep. So you can have a look at that and see exactly where, what’s it called? It’s just in one of the extra tabs in the windy app. Oh,

ASPW (40:45):

Okay. I didn’t know that. Alright. Okay.

Rob Barton (40:48):

So you can see what the currents are doing and where you are in relation to them. So I was within a couple of miles of being in the wrong current, going the wrong way, but managed to get into the west and northwest current. But it was still a challenge to, well, I was aiming for Dara Salam, that was my original destination point, and I missed that because I couldn’t get west enough. And the current took me north. So Tanga was the next logical place. I went down the east side of Zanzibar, and that was the first land that I saw, which was exciting, but nowhere near as exciting as seeing Tanzania, which was my final destination. And that again was another, a close call. I went around Zanzibar. I was about halfway to Tanzania to the Tanzania coast, and the wind changed, came in from the west and there was no way I was going to be able to make that coast with the wind from that direction.

ASPW (41:48):

So the wind is straight into your face.

Rob Barton (41:50):

Yes. And the current was taking me north, so I would’ve ended up with a wind blowing me offshore and the current taking me north. So Somalia was looking very likely at that point. So I turned around and I went back to, I wasn’t able to make Zanzibar itself, but just to the north of Zanzibar, there are some shoals. So I went to those shoals anchored up, and 24 hours later, wind was more in my favour and I made the dash across that 25 mile stretch of water to Tanzania anchored up overnight. Seeing land, you’re really low on the water, so you don’t see land until you’re within 10, 15 miles of the land. But the sun that night, the sun set behind the mountains and it’s quite volcanic and some wonderful sort of skyline that you see as you approach Tanzania and the sun set behind the mountains. And just seeing that I was whooping for joy, it was really great. It was really great. And then I got into that Anchorage late at night in the dark. That

ASPW (42:56):

Wasn’t what you were talking about earlier, about the fact that you did some rowing at night and that was then when you had to make up that time and not to be blown off course.

Rob Barton (43:04):

Well, that night for sure. But prior to that, the getting to Zanzibar bit was, there’s a 54 hour stretch that I rode for 50 hours of getting just to the northern tip of Zanzibar. So that was pretty full on. And yeah, I ended up with chafing sores on my bum and I was in a bit of a mess.

ASPW (43:23):

So again, that’s the end goal motivating you and that end goal for a moment was Somalia and you were thinking, I don’t want to get, that is not happening. And that is called motivation. Yeah.

Rob Barton (43:34):

Yeah, very much. Yeah. And also there were people, so Neil was on shore, he’d already been at Dara Sala to meet me and I didn’t make it to there. So he’d gone to Tanger and the yacht club and there was a reception party there to meet me. Fantastic. So yeah, it was great. It was great. There’s a whole load of yachts came out. But anyway, so just, oh

ASPW (43:55):

No, no. Yachts came out

Rob Barton (43:57):

Three yachts. So three yachts. There were three yachts that left. I wasn’t aware of this until I got there, but there were three yachts that left from Carnarvon a few days after I left. And they obviously got there way before me. They’d been to different islands along the way and different ports and they’d had a long time to get acclimatised and so on. So they’d been there for a while. But they were told of my departure by I think border force, let them know that I’d left and said, keep an eye out for him on the way. So they were looking out for me. I think they were even following me on my Facebook page. So they saw my slow snail like progress compared to theirs. So they were interested to come out and see who this idiot was on a rowing boat.

ASPW (44:42):

That’s extraordinary. So that was the question, but you’ve kind of answered it for me. Arriving in Tanzania, you’d obviously made forward arrangements for passport clearance and things like that. So wasn’t a whole lot of policemen on the beach suddenly seeing this crazy person arriving out of nowhere and sending you back. You didn’t have the right paperwork.

Rob Barton (45:03):

Yes. Well, I actually checked on that before departing, and you don’t, whilst if you land at an airport in Tanzania, you have to have a visa, but if you arrive by sea, it’s visa on arrival. So they gave me a visa on arrival and they met me on the beach. Department of Immigration and Department of Health were both on the beach really to meet me. Yeah, which was great. Came on board, inspected the boat, made sure it was healthy. Very, right,

ASPW (45:30):

Of course, yes, they would do that. They would want to do that

Rob Barton (45:33):

And then wouldn’t leave until I took down my Q flag. So your quarantine flag, which is quite amusing,

ASPW (45:39):

Explain the quarantine

Rob Barton (45:39):

Flag. So when you arrive in a new port, a yachts are supposed to fly a yellow flag, which is a Q flag, which indicates that you need health clearance for quarantine. Basically. Look, in most countries it’s a formality. They just come down and clear you. But in Tanzania they come down and they inspect the boat and then they won’t leave until you actually take the flag down, which is a bit of fun. Really? I thought it was quite amusing.

ASPW (46:09):

Wow, that is an extraordinary story. How long before you actually set off from Carnarvon? Did you get the idea?

Rob Barton (46:19):

Oh, a few years. A few years. So I originally got the idea I was looking for some ocean-based challenge, but I come from a sailing family, so my dad and my mom and dad had sailed around the world. They spent 13 odd years doing that. My grandpa had sailed across the Atlantic for 20 years, backwards and forwards every year. And so trying to find something hadn’t already been done was quite a challenge. I was on YouTube one day as you are, and I stumbled down this rabbit hole and came across a young lady, Sarah Tonne, who at the age of 24 rode from Fremantle to Mauritius. So she was first lady to do I think the youngest person to do it as well. And she wrote a book. So I bought her book and read that and was suitably inspired and thought, yep, that’s what I want to do. But when I started researching it, I found that nobody had been all the way to Africa. So I thought, well, if I’m going to write a Mauritius, I might as well go that little bit further and row to Africa and be the first person to do nonstop. To Africa.

ASPW (47:21):

To Africa and unsupported. When somebody could regards themselves as supported, what does that actually mean? It means that they’re driving, they’re rowing with another vessel. What is the definition of unsupported?

Rob Barton (47:36):

So for example, I was offered support when I got to Ill Raphael, I was woken up early in the morning by the Ian Coast Guard who came up to see me and they offered me, but at that time I’d been at sea for 50 odd days or 56, 58, I can’t remember. Anyway, a while. And they offered me fresh food. They said, oh, you’ve been at sea so long, would you like some fresh food? And I kept to decline because to accept would’ve been accepting support. So basically it means that would’ve been very minor support, but generally supported would mean another yacht escorting you or

ASPW (48:13):

It means true self-sufficiency. You carry everything you’re going to need for the trip from beginning to end and that’s it. But sure, support is, doesn’t really qualify because that’s the same as you looking at the weather on your chart, on your plotter. So that doesn’t qualify.

Rob Barton (48:32):

No, I could have done that, but it was great having the support that I got from U W A using their data model for example, that doesn’t count as support, but it did make a massive difference.

ASPW (48:45):

Yeah. Wrapping this up now, give me the moment that you were the most scared where your heart jumped into your mouth. Tell me about that.

Rob Barton (48:56):

Probably the first time I capsized probably about, so I was

ASPW (49:00):

So you capsized more than once?

Rob Barton (49:02):

Yes. Yeah. I capsized three times, twice whilst I was rowing and once whilst I was asleep in bed.

ASPW (49:08):

Okay, okay, carry on.

Rob Barton (49:11):

So they weren’t complete 360 degree rolls, they were 180 degrees. So the first time I was thrown into the water and the boat was upside down and I was sort of looking up at it thinking, is it going to keep rolling and roll on top of me? Was that actually, that probably wasn’t the scariest because that just happened. I didn’t have time to get scared. Probably the scariest moment was seeing great walls of water coming towards me and thinking this is going to be the end

ASPW (49:40):

Because the boat would break or broach or what was,

Rob Barton (49:44):

Because when you get those huge waves that are breaking, if they break on top of the boat on top of you, it just hurts. I mean, yes, there’s a chance of breaking the boats, swamping it, but if you are on the boat and the way waves breaking on top of you, anyone who’s been surfing, who’s been dumped on the beach will empathise with the power of a breaking wave. And these waves are just huge. But apart from the times that I was capsized and then there were lots of breaking waves over the boat, but mostly they break before they get to the boat or they break just as you go past the wave just after it or just in front. So to get that combination where it actually is breaking right on you was quite unusual. But the fear of it happening when you see this wall of water coming towards you,

ASPW (50:31):

Time to be scared.

Rob Barton (50:33):

That’s right. You have time to be scared. Whereas when it actually happens, it’s not actually that bad. It was bad, but it’s not as bad as your fear of it. Yeah.

ASPW (50:42):

Because when something like that happens, and it’s a bit of a surprise, you just act on it and deal with it because you’ve got to get the boat righted and you’ve got to get back into the boat. And afterwards it was like the lion thing that I was, it gave me a fright, but I wasn’t scared. Afterwards when I had settled down, I could hear the lion actually. He’d moved off a little bit and he was calling, but he wasn’t angry, he wasn’t looking for me, he was looking for his mates, he was calling to the pride. And so I knew that. So I knew I wasn’t in danger. But that moment of terror, which you wouldn’t have experienced, that’s probably the equivalent of, oh crikey, this thing’s going to hit me any sick. And then afterwards you calm down, you kind of relax and your heart’s doing this and then you realise that was really, really horrible.

Rob Barton (51:37):

I mean, for me, I could have avoided a lot of those cap sizes. It just would’ve been a longer trip if you’re going straight down a wave. And to do that, you just have to go with the weather, put out a drove to slow yourself down or put out a drove to keep the boat at the right angle, but then you’re not necessarily going in the right direction. So you have to weigh up the risk of size against the forward progress that you want to make in the right direction. So for me, mostly it was a case of accept the risk row in the direction you want to go and get the odd cap size. So be it. It’s fun.

ASPW (52:16):

Yeah. Now tell me what, now obviously this is like you’ve sown a seed. I can imagine. Yeah, absolutely. So you’ve got some ideas.

Rob Barton (52:25):

I do, I do. I’ve got quite a few ideas. So I’ve been doing some research. So rowing I don’t think I want to do anymore. I think I’ve kind of put that to bed. But the ocean still calls and I’d like to get back into sailing. My youth, I did a lot more sailing, so I’d like to get back into sailing. I’m looking at the moment at foiling, six and a half metre boats, which are pretty hairy. But I quite like the idea of there’s an existing world record time for sailing around Australia. I’d quite like to have a crack at beating that in one of these foiling boats.

ASPW (52:58):

Foiling boat is, if I’m correct, a hard, it’s a single HU Monohull, but it doesn’t have sails. It has aerofoils. That

Rob Barton (53:06):

Correct? No, sorry. No, it does have sails. It has huge amounts of sails. So lots of canvas, but it’s like a hydrofoil. So the foils,

ASPW (53:13):

Oh, is that what you mean? Right. Okay. I

Rob Barton (53:15):

Understand these foils. So the boat lifts up out of the water and sits on these foils and it is capable of some pretty incredible speed. So you’re doing 15, 20 knots, and again, they’ve got great upwind performance as well. So I think round Australia would be a good one to start with. And then I’d like to go back across the ocean, but I think it’s back to Africa in the same boat and establish a record that’s never been done nonstop in a foiling boat. And there’s no established record in the northern route either. There’s an established record from Cape to Cape, so from Southern Tip of Africa to Cape Lewin, I think it is. There’s an established record for that. So it might come back that way, but I dunno if a six and a half metre boat is capable in those southern oceans, I think it’s might be a bit too high risk.

ASPW (54:01):

Okay. So I called Debs on the first interview when you finish that one.

Rob Barton (54:05):

Okay, great.

ASPW (54:08):

Rob, thanks very, very much for your time with me this morning. It’s an incredible adventure. Thank you. And I know Rob from financial services that Rob has supplied to me and my family and when he came up with the concept, you walked in and said, oh, I’ll be off. I won’t be in touch for two or three months. I’ll be away from home. Where are you going? Expecting? Oh, I’m just going for a sabbatical in Europe or something. No, I’m rowing across the Indian Ocean. And I was what? Say that again? Did I hear you? Did I hear you correctly?

Rob Barton (54:45):

Yeah, yeah,

ASPW (54:46):

Yeah. Brilliant. Really brilliant. Okay. Okay.

Rob Barton (54:50):

It’s been fun.

ASPW (54:51):

Yeah. Fantastic. Well good luck. Hope you get next, the next journey.

Rob Barton (54:56):

Well if anyone out there thinking of or interested in sponsorship, then yeah, please touch base because that’s going to be the key thing is getting the right level of funding to do it. Okay.

ASPW (55:09):

Alright, so those of you’re interested in doing that, you’ll see contact details, more details about Rob’s trip, Rob’s Facebook page, links to them, links to me. If you want to contact Rob through me, that’s also fine. I can always through my website on YouTube, all of the details and links are linked to that.

Rob Barton (55:31):

Fantastic

ASPW (55:31):

Link to that page.

Rob Barton (55:32):

Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you. Thanks and thanks for the opportunity. It’s been great.

ASPW (55:36):

That was brilliant. Fantastic story. Fantastic story. We need to go and have a beer and talk about other stuff because I’m just now so intrigued by this adventure. You’ve just been not great. Okay.

ASPW (55:48):

Thank you everybody for listening. If you’d like to know more information about Rob and his exploits and the next Journey podcast, visit the next journey.net. My name is Andrew Spire White. See you next time.