Relentless: A Story of Grit and Endurance from the First Person to Kayak the Tasman Solo

By Scott Donaldson

The story of Scott Donaldson's relentless journey to be the first person to cross the Tasman sea solo in a kayak

Unpredictable and unforgiving, the Tasman Sea is one of the most hostile stretches of water in the world. An Australian adventurer attempted to kayak across in 2007, disappearing without a trace. In 2018 Kiwi adventurer Scott Donaldson spent two months alone at sea to achieve a world first. It was his third attempt, having fallen a heartbreaking 80 kilometres short in 2014.

Donaldson's world first is an inspirational story of dogged perseverance, true Kiwi grit and relentless endurance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Aug 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781775491767

Scott Donaldson

Scott Donaldson is a former triathlete, Coast-to-Coast competitor, Ironman coach, mentor and competitor in a myriad of sports. He began as a swimmer to strengthen his lungs, after having life-threatening asthma as a child. Scott's son also has asthma, and his father died aged 42 from a heart attack, and so Scott has made fitness a life priority. Formerly from Rotorua, Donaldson moved to Coffs Harbour in Australia to organise the campaign to cross the Tasman solo in a kayak.

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Contents

Foreword

Preface

Prologue

1Early life

2Athlete turned coach

3The Atlantic challenge

4Taking up the challenge

5My philosophy

6Building the boat

7Preparation

8The first attempt

9The second attempt

10Preparing for a third attempt

11Building the boat – redux

12The third attempt

13Shark!

14Storm!

15Approaching the end

16The landing

17An interlude

18The aftermath

Photo Section

Acknowledgements

About the Authors

Copyright

Foreword

A MATE OF MINE phoned me up one day and said I had to come down to the local bistro and meet this bloke, because he was something special.

Now, I’d never heard of Scott Donaldson, but it’s not that often you meet someone with that sort of look in his eyes. In my coaching career in rugby league I’ve met some pretty impressive people – and Scott would be right up among them.

He is unique – in some ways he looks so ordinary, and yet he has that dash of extraordinary about him. I always found that you couldn’t necessarily pick up who the toughest among a team were from how they looked. Instead, it might be a sly grin or a comment, or some air of confidence that gave it away.

As a coach, there are certain special athletes who, at times when I was in a difficult position, I just knew would do the job for me – players like Ellery Hanley, Wally Lewis and Mark Graham. I knew that they would do something special to get me out of a big hole – they wouldn’t just try to get the job done, they would get it done. Scott had that same quality of absolute dependability.

When Scott told me he was going to paddle across the Tasman, and pointed to his boat parked outside, there wasn’t even one per cent of me thought that this bloke might be having me on. His determination was like an aura around him, and it left me in absolutely no doubt that he was going to do what he said he was going to do.

When he showed me the boat, it struck me that everything matched: here was this extraordinary guy, setting out to do an extraordinary thing, and the boat he was doing it in was just as extraordinary.

While many would see Scott’s journey as a battle against the elements, I saw it as battling against man. The battle was always going to be mostly in his own mind – the mental toughness it would require to keep going with something like that is at a level that very few of us possess.

Often, I would be preparing a team who were the complete underdog – I knew it and they knew it – but I would ask them to try and achieve something I knew darn well I couldn’t have done myself and that I could only imagine doing.

While Scott was out there on his own, he always had a team around him, and if anyone on that team had cracked in any way, he wouldn’t have been able to carry on. While there was only one person on the team who was ever going to go cross the finish line, every member of that team was critical to its success.

I remember saying to him that it must have been hard to get to sleep at night while he was planning the trip, because before any big challenge, you go over it in your mind many times before the referee’s whistle actually blows.

There’s no bigger challenge than this one, and I can imagine the whistle must have blown in his mind many times before he started. In his mind, he must have paddled countless crossings, in the best and the worst of conditions he could imagine.

It’s clear you would have to be fully mentally in the zone to get in your boat in Australia and just head off – but when I talked to him about this it was months before his scheduled departure date and he was already well and truly in the zone.

I knew from my career that the big occasion can get to any athlete. I can remember standing in the tunnel at a packed Wembley Stadium before my Wigan team played the Challenge Cup final against Halifax. It was a very formal occasion, with the teams being introduced to the royal family before the game.

As we waited in the tunnel, I looked across at Chris Anderson, who was coaching Halifax, and I thought, ‘Jeez, he doesn’t look very well – he looks a bit grey.’ Then I looked at his team, and they looked like frightened young boys. I could tell the occasion had got to them. ‘We will murder these guys today’, I thought – until I looked back at my team, and they all looked just as bad. Big occasions get to people, even those who are very well prepared.

Even with all his preparation work done, it struck me that Scott wouldn’t know how to handle the hardest parts of the trip until they actually happened. How do you know what you’ll face out in the unpredictable ocean? How do you know how you’ll react to tough times in the middle of the sea? I couldn’t begin to imagine what that loneliness of being so alone for so long must feel like, but I knew he was the sort of guy who would never feel helpless.

I’ve had a lot of health issues over the years, particularly with my heart, and when you’re at death’s door, it’s easy to say that it is all out of my hands now. But it’s not: you’ve got to try and control the parts you can control, like your attitude, and how you respond to setbacks. When Scott finds himself in storms, he can’t control the weather, but he can control how he deals with it. Someone successfully completing a challenge like this, I think, gives you hope.

Scott’s crossing didn’t get the media and public attention at the time that I felt it deserved, but I do hope history reflects just how great his achievement is. To me, it sits alongside the achievements of people like Christopher Columbus and those other explorers who set out to sea never quite knowing what they would find on the other side. Those explorers are remembered and celebrated in history. In our generation, I think this achievement stands alongside those of our modern-day heroes like Sir Edmund Hillary.

Graham Lowe

Graham Lowe is a coaching mentor,

media commentator and rugby league legend.

Preface

AS A KID, I was fascinated by the story of the race to be the first person to reach the South Pole. To my mind, Amundsen vs Scott was the original adventure race.

On 14 December 1911, the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team became the first people to reach the South Pole. A month later, the British explorer Robert Falcon Scott arrived at the Pole, only to find a tent left there by Amundsen’s party along with a note politely asking him to forward a letter to the King of Norway.

The Scott team’s trek back to their ship was a horrid combination of depression and hardship, culminating in Scott’s final diary entry on 29 March 1912: ‘I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far.’

All in his party were lost. All of Amundsen’s team returned home safely.

When I was young, I never stopped to think about why Scott’s heroic failure was more celebrated than the efficient success of Amundsen.

Looking at it now, I can see that even before he left home, there were plenty of pointers that Scott’s trip would end in disaster. Yes, he planned an exploratory reconnaissance mission to test techniques and check out the conditions, which was good. But what wasn’t so good was he didn’t seek the expertise of those who lived in the conditions. He also failed to learn from his experiences about the resources needed, the environment and his limits. And what was really bad was that his aspirations clearly outweighed his skill and his reasoning.

Amundsen was a complete contrast to Scott. He’d been planning an expedition to the North Pole, but in 1909, Americans Frederick Cook and Robert Peary got there first – bad for Amundsen, but a good indication of his preparation. You should always leave for an adventure when you’re ready, not when your plan or other forces try to dictate that you should start.

When he was second mate on a boat that got trapped in Arctic Sea ice, Amundsen recorded everything, with particular attention to clothing, nutrition, techniques and tools. He took that experience and began training, testing and learning. He also studied Scott’s 1901–1904 expedition to Antarctica, which was also riddled with mistakes, and from that produced a favourite phrase of mine: ‘Can it be that the dog has not understood its master? Or is it the master who has not understood the dog?’

Amundsen spent a winter in the Arctic working with and coming to understand sled dogs. He hung out with Inuit to learn about their clothing and to work out what wouldn’t retain sweat (eat ya heart out, Gore-Tex!). He identified problems then tested his theories, because planning is only the start of an adventure. His search for solutions was detailed and relentless.

When it came to his team, the five blokes he chose, along with four sledges and 52 dogs, were naturally inclined to the cold conditions.

Even so, in September 1911, they had a false start – leaving too early in the season, they suffered a blast of early polar weather. As a result, they sensibly returned home. One of the team didn’t like that decision-making process – so the HR department sorted that out (a spot of biffo) and he was stood down. Amundsen then set the date for their next trip. They were to leave on 19 October.

Amundsen’s team displayed great courage and heart, but – unlike Scott – they also displayed skill and planning. For example, Amundsen’s team ate some of their sled dogs, and laid down more food stores on their way to the Pole than Scott’s team, anticipating that they might or might not require all of them on the way back. That created redundancy, something of which I am a big fan.

It’s always surprised me how many modern-day adventurers haven’t learned lessons from those who went before them, even those from 100 years ago.

Amundsen did some really good stuff, so if you’re planning an adventure you should take that on board and, where possible, copy it. Scott did some quite bad stuff, so, again, take it on board and avoid it where you can.

There is much to take from the history of adventure and from those with experience. In turn, that should then be tempered with the advice of film director Baz Lurhmann, who once said: ‘My advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.’

Listen to what’s said, but make it your own by experience.

In history, adventure meant you weighed the risks, accepted the consequences as real and then got on with it. In the modern world, we don’t comprehend the genuine danger, work ethic and guesswork those adventurers were willing to accept. In the days when chivalry thrived, and adventure was revered, success was optional as long as you showed heart, honour and bravery. We don’t subscribe to that level of risk any more, but it’s a shame that we haven’t retained the good bits.

There’s plenty to learn from historical tales like that of Scott vs Amundsen. But clearly, humanity has trouble learning. War keeps happening, right? I tried to learn from the past to make decisions for my adventure. Doing it that way is much quicker and far easier than just learning through trial and error.

As I took on my own adventure, I learned plenty from the story of Scott and Amundsen. Like theirs, this is a story of doing whatever it takes to achieve the impossible, facing the challenge the Tasman has to offer and, over a period of nine years, finding the path to success.

Scott Donaldson

Coffs Harbour

February 2019

Prologue

THERE WAS A KNOCK on the kayak’s cabin door. I opened it and Mike Melody’s face appeared. A helicopter hovered overhead. Mike was there to rescue me. It was easier, he said, to do it in the water, so I jumped into the broiling Tasman Sea.

Mike hooked me up to the winch, and they began lifting me up to the helicopter. I’d spent the last 84 days in my kayak and now I was looking down at it for probably the last time. Then I looked across at Mt Taranaki. I looked back at Mike.

‘F***, I could swim that,’ I said.

My attempt to be the first person to paddle the Tasman solo was over, just 80 kilometres from my destination. I had survived storms and sharks and solitude during family bereavements, but now it was all over.

They hoisted me in into the helicopter, and I got to have a proper conversation with another human for the first time in a couple of months. We flew a lap around New Plymouth. The crew told me they’d ordered a pie to be ready for me when we landed.

For five years, I’d been planning my attempt to cross the Tasman. My first attempt lasted two days before equipment failure forced me back to shore. This time, I’d made good progress across the ocean. I had just two decent days of paddling left between me and shore.

Then a storm hit. It was a big one. For six days, I sat in the tiny cabin of my specially built kayak and tried to ride it out. The storm was so violent I was strapped down on to my thin foam mattress with several heavy-duty seatbelts. Around me, parts of the boat were beginning to fail. A bungee cord would tear away or something would rip off. The radar reflector – a piece of equipment meant to make me look bigger on ships’ radars, so they wouldn’t run me over – tore off its flexible stem and was lost. My battery power began to wane. The battery on my satellite phone was fading, so I knew that I was going to be left without power or communications overnight, which meant that if I was run over by a boat or had another disaster, my only option would be an emergency EPIRB SOS.

About 20 times a day, the sideways chop of the stormy sea would tip the boat violently on to its side, then, like sitting on a rollercoaster, I would resist the movement to force it back upright again. One of the seatbelt bolts was ripped from the fibreglass wall of the cabin, which meant I was being bashed around. It was like sitting inside a washing machine.

What if I got thrown over and knocked out in the night?

Slowly, the weather was pushing my boat away from New Zealand shores and back into the Tasman Sea. It was pushing me beyond the range of an air rescue. The sea was so turbulent, no ship would be able to safely come and pick me up. I spoke to my shore manager, Nigel Escott. We both knew it was time to call it off.

Over the previous few days, waiting that storm out, I had had plenty of time to lie there, being thrown around, and think about what was happening, about what it would be like if I didn’t make it to the finish line. In that time, I found I was pretty satisfied with what I had done. I knew I had done everything I could. I’d got everything I wanted out of the journey. I wasn’t doing it for anyone else, I was doing it for me and it had been inspirational. I was at peace. I’d had a genuine adventure.

It was lucky I felt that way, as I didn’t think another attempt would be possible. Both the preparation and the cost were far too much for me to consider. Funding the trip had wiped out our savings. We had no money left to spend on trying again. And we probably wouldn’t have a boat either.

When the helicopter arrived, I left the cabin door ajar, so the sea would flood the boat and sink it, meaning it wouldn’t be a hazard for other ships. I was pretty certain I would never again see the boat that I’d spent years trying to raise the money to equip and take out to sea.

Yet, four years later, I would once again push off from the beach at Coffs Harbour in New South Wales, and try to become the first person to paddle a kayak across the Tasman Sea. This is the story of how I did it.

CHAPTER 1

Early life

I’M NOT GOING TO talk lots about my life when I was a kid. I prefer to deal with the now and look for what’s coming next. I’ll tell you a little bit about some of the things that shaped me into who I am though.

I was born in New Zealand in the Hutt Valley, but we moved to Ruawai, a small town just south of Dargaville in Northland, when I was about two years old. My dad Allan managed a branch of the National Bank and my mum Charmaine was at home. There were three of us, my brother Craig, who is ten years older, my sister Rhonda, who is seven years older, and me, the surprise. Of course, the older two think I was spoiled. I probably was.

I learned how to work the system early on. Our house was attached to the bank, and I would get home from school and ask Mum for an ice block. On receiving the standard issue ‘No’, I would walk around the corner and go up to the bank manager’s window, and Dad would immediately hand over ten cents just to get me out of there.

My dad died when I was seven. Looking