By Jerram Watts
Two thousand two hundred kilometres, 54 days, 17kg and a $6000 satellite phone bill later, Shaun Quincey landed at 90 Mile Beach.
It was a voyage he says was far more challenging, bruising and mentally exhausting than he could ever have imagined or planned for.
“I left thinking I was mentally prepared for it, and left thinking I knew the challenges and how hard they were going to be, but there was no way,” he told Marcus Lush on RadioLIVE this morning.
“That ocean completely broke me down, it really took everything from me, but it also gave me a lot.”
The weather proved to be one of the biggest obstacles for Quincey as he attempted to be only the second man to row solo across the Tasman – the first being his father back in 1977.
“[The weather was] 10 times worse than I imagined,” he says. “We had discussions, the weather guy and me, of the possibility of arriving within 30 to 40 days if we got the weather right.
“We predicted that if I was rowing at one knot for 24 hours a day I’d be home in 28 days – and the weather absolutely slammed me and I didn’t really realise how much I’d be at the mercy of the weather.”
Quincey spent seven days in the cabin of his small vessel because of terrible conditions, was capsized twice – once in the middle of the night – and even hit a whale.
“When I was dealing with those sorts of things I thought it was okay, I could tough it out, it’s fine,” he says.
“But it was always the morning afterwards or a couple of days later where I’d be exhausted, I’d cry or sort of lose my temper and just sort of yell and curse at the sea.
“You’d sort of have these moments of ‘ooh, jeepers, I’ve got to tone it back, am I actually losing the plot?’ You don’t ever really realise the toll its taking at the time, but it was always afterwards.”
Quincey said once he got some decent sleep things were more manageable.
“Just sleep more, relax more and as soon as you get to sleep you seem to be able to manage a lot more things,” he says.
The toil of rowing for a gruelling 10-15 hours a day pushed Quincey to the limit – so much so he considered giving up on day three.
“There were certain times in my head when I gave up and didn’t go through with it… on day three I’d had enough and I was thinking of ways of getting out of it and how I could sink the boat or set it on fire and be close enough that it would be okay,” he says.
Quincey says the mental challenge became even greater when he was tempted with comforts from home.
“I never felt any pressure to not give up, it was more of a case of ‘you can get out of this situation in 10 hours time if you want’, and when you’re halfway it’s such a huge sort of thing when someone says, ‘we can pick you up and you can be sleeping in a bed in 24 hours time and be home in 30 hours’.
“Whenever it’s like that it’s always going to be tempting, and I’m so glad and very happy that I said no and pushed on and pushed through those little barriers.”
The voyage almost came to an abrupt end when Quincey’s desalination machine broke down and then lost a lot of drinkable water when he capsized.
But on March 2 more water was air-dropped to him so he could continue his journey.
His last big obstacle was a current sweeping him north, Quincey says he had to go for it to make sure he didn’t get swept past the top of the country.
“My weatherman, Roger, has been saying, ‘mate, you just have to go’. He said ‘if you’re really going to use your No Doz up, use it now or we’re going to miss’.
“I made a call to the rescue co-ordinations centre three days ago saying, ‘what happens if I miss, is there any assets in the area?’ And they said, ‘no, you’re just going to go north and there is a strong current pushing you north’ – it was a huge risk.”
A huge risk well worth the payoff.
After swimming the final 300m of his journey due to rough water at 90 Mile Beach, Quincey embraced his mother and his girlfriend before engaging the media scrum and all those who had turned up to greet him.
A bacon-egg and hash brown sandwich and a few beers later, and Quincey was satisfied to be in the company of those who had made his trip the success it was.
“It was more about just being around people and eating and chatting and things, which I really missed and really longed for and so it was really lovely to have that last night,” Quincey says of his first evening in New Zealand, spent at a rented house in Ahipara.
Despite the success the voyage was – he beat his father’s record by nine days – Quincey says he would never do it again.
“I would never do it again; I would never do it again. I would recommend it, it is life-changing in terms of mentally challenging, preparing yourself and things, but I’d probably say no this week – but we can talk about it in a month’s time,” he told Marcus Lush.
Quincey was jovial after 54 days at sea – he is still trying to find his ‘land legs’.
“I still am moving. I’m walking around like I’m a little bit tipsy, a little bit drunk. I’m rocking from side to side the entire time,” he says.
3 News/RadioLIVE