Status Updates From Completely Mad: Tom McClean...

Hansen lists over 20 news outlets that published Fairfax's obituary. Not sure I needed to read the name of each one.

All the boasting about sharks and Fairfax ended up almost being eaten on his second journey.

Hansen doesn't go for nuance in these last pages: the shark-fighting charlatan and the humble hardworking veteran.

Almost unbelievably appropriate landings, from the destinations to the fine details, for both based on their dispositions.

With all the references to Once is Enough you would think Hansen would give a quick explanation of the quote.

Both encountered unusually severe problems just before the ends of their journeys. Perceptions possibly influenced by exhaustion.

A lot of this was entertaining for big time nautical nerds, but at some level, that was about 250 pages of preface for:

To the very end Tom’s commitment was very different from Fairfax’s, as he would do nothing less than complete his journey totally unassisted. He would not be first across the Atlantic alone in a rowboat, but his uncompromising achievement may seem to posterity to merit the greater acclaim.

Not even lacking description, but maybe commentary--something to clarify journal entries like this:

He got into Britannia and did his best to row for a few hours. During the overnight, he “kept falling overboard… still under the effects of the whiskey and euphoria of the meeting."

A good example of the rough edges on Hansen's prose:

"By 10 o’clock it had risen to about 40 MPH and Silver was zipping along so beautifully in the right direction that Tom was so overjoyed he could have cried if he were a crying man."

Hard to reconcile Tom's midnight swims to check the hull with the apprehension related to Bluey, the supposedly 15 foot shark swimming alongside Super Silver, not to mention Fairfax's apocryphal bravado about shark wrangling.

Both men having experience and/or fascination with the jungle is incredible.

All this had completely driven from Tom’s mind thoughts of the weather, his bastard feet, and Silver’s certain misplaced position in the ocean.

The bullet hit Tom in the lower part of his stomach. It went through his bladder and pelvis, missing the bone, the veins, the nerves, the arteries—everything. It blew off the left cheek of his buttocks, hit another bloke in the leg, and buried itself in the ground.... “The pain in my backside was terrible, as if the whole of my bum was on fire.”

One at a time the men on the dhow did their athletic best to jump aboard, including the chap with the broken leg. When it was Tom’s turn, the rescue boat suddenly dropped away. Tom jumped so hard that he cleared the boat and landed in the sea. The crew had to haul him on board.

Significantly, he took out two books that would greatly inspire him and ultimately spur him on to make his great ocean adventure. The books were The Voyage of Discovery (1905), Robert Falcon Scott’s account of the British national expedition of 1901–1904 ...and South: Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Glorious Epic of the Antarctic

Nautical books can't be all descriptions of boat maintenance, tying knots and trying to get dry, but some of these flashbacks to the orphanage start to feel like punishment.

Tom crawled into his shelter to nibble a piece of chocolate while he lay there looking up at a photograph he had pinned to the ceiling. It was of the man who had been his hero ever since, quite by accident, he read a book during his early army days (Tom had barely read a book as a boy) about the Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton.

Gradually, the joy of his first steps on terra firma turned into “a sour, frustrating bitterness” by the “inescapable need” to give up the notion that his gorgeous green cay was “paradise,” in comparison to the “Hades” back in his rowboat.

According to John, Svetlana was “very happy about it” and, to make sure the picture would come out well, asked him to “repeat the performance” for the photographer. John was then offered the chance to take a hot shower—presumably without Svetlana joining him—which he accepted. When he finally left the Krasnozavodsk, “I was feeling very happy myself.” “Russian ships, he thought, were “wonderful.”

But, instead, after 125 days at sea...Will I ever see land, any land, again? And if I did, and it was not Florida, would I have the fortitude, the determination, the madness to go on? That would be the final test. If I could resist the temptation to end my journey then and there, then surely, even if I never do reach Florida and the sea finally manages to destroy me, will I not, nevertheless, have won?

Actually, he had planned to keep enough food for 30 days, but he took so much “joy in dumping Archie’s grub overboard” that he got carried away and tossed more of the special Horlicks rations into the sea than he had planned, later realizing that he had food for 10 fewer days.

Apparently there are simply not enough calories in six pounds of fish to replace what I burn. But if I try to eat more, and I have, I only succeed in vomiting, feeling sick and hungrier than before. It is getting so bad I find myself wishing I had some of Archie’s stuff left. A turtle would make my day, but there aren’t any to be seen.

“I bit through each blister in turn, carefully nicking a hole as near the middle as possible, with the corners of my eye teeth, then squeezed out as much water as I could. Then I plunged my hands in and out of a bucket of water several times to try to pickle the dead skin into some state of firmness in order to protect the patches of raw flesh underneath.”