For those of us who have no intention on going on an epic expedition you wouldn’t think we had much in common with those that do.
Yet at the beginning of newly released documentary Home, which follows Sarah Outen as she sets off on a mission to circumnavigate the world using human power alone, the Brit narrates:
“On one hand, I’m confident and accomplished. On the other hand, I’ve yet to come to terms with how lost I am.”
Now this is something many of us can relate to, non?
#thebeginning
It was April 1 2011 when the East Midlander kayaked away from under London’s Tower Bridge, planning to take two-and-a-half years to loop the northern hemisphere using body power alone. So kayaking and cycling across Europe and Asia, rowing across the North Pacific and cycling across North America before rowing home across the North Atlantic. Yup.
The naivety of a 25-year-old as she wryly observes in the film.
Sarah Outen with one epic selfie out in the open ocean (Pic credit: Sarah Outen)
Sarah published a book, Dare to Do soon after the completion of the expedition. But it’s not until now, almost four years to the day when Sarah completed the loop by kayaking back under Tower Bridge, that Sarah has released the documentary. There’s a reason for the delay, which we’ll get to.
#Farmlife
Right now Sarah couldn’t be further from the life of an adventurer in which she enjoyed – mostly – the “pedal/row, eat, sleep, repeat” mantra of a long-distance traveller.
She is jam-making in a farm kitchen where she lives with wife Lucy. When I speak to her, initially via FaceTime, I can see a wonderful mix of red berries, almost smelling the sweetness through the screen. The simple meditational stirring process no doubt keeping Sarah on an even keel while we talk.
I’m aware that Sarah still manages PTSD, triggered during one of the the rows on the expedition. I can hear the relief in her voice when we switch to audio due to connection issues.
#readyfortheoff
Initially I’d heard about Sarah’s expedition when working in London so I headed down to Tower Bridge in my lunch break to see off this intrepid adventurer.
It took me longer than anticipated and by the time I sweatily arrived at a fast walking pace, it was very much, ‘nothing to see here’. Sarah had kayaked off, with very little fanfare, towards the entryway to the sea before turning south and paddling her way toward France.
I lived vicariously through Sarah for the next few years by subscribing to her regular blog posts and social media feeds. I even commissioned an article on her journey when I was editor of Women in Sport magazine.
The small everyday stories surrounding Sarah’s endeavour is what I loved most. The confirmation that people around the world are inherently friendly and kind, despite what you see on the news. And I appreciated Sarah’s extraordinary privilege of having the time to absorb the most incredible moments provided by nature and wildlife.
The world is wonderful when it feels like this (Pic credit: Sarah Outen)
#GaotheChinaman
I ask Sarah about one of my favourite moments, which I’d read in her book Dare To Do. In a world that appears increasingly divided what comes across is how people all over the world love to be connected. So I ask Sarah to tell me a little about her experience meeting Gao, a young Chinaman who lived in a remote desert region.
“This young guy was kind of in awe of my journey and what I was doing – I’ve just pulled a maggot out of the jam, that’s funny. I just said, ‘Look, it’s just riding a bike. If you can get on a bike, then just grab a bag, get out of your front door and just have a go. You don’t have to ride massively far – just do it’.
Sarah Outen and Gao (Pic credit: Sarah Outen)
“So he went on his way. Half an hour down the road he came after me, stopped me and said he wanted to come with me. So after a few minutes of pondering and trying to dissuade him I realised I’d just told him that anyone can do this, so you’ve got to say yes.
“He went and bought himself a bike and borrowed, found, whatever, gear that he’d need and went on to cycle across the country with me. It was just the coolest thing to see him grow in confidence.”
#fromrussiawithlove
In the documentary Sarah admits that people had warned her about the dangers of travelling through Russia before she left. She’d noticed a bit of an intimidating police escort for a few days at one point.
The next minute, though, you see one of the police officers having a go on her bike. It is weighed down with lots of kit, so he’s wobbling and bumping along on a rough road, laughing.
“I’d certainly agree there’s a lot of divisiveness, certainly politically, right now. Leaving groups of people that maybe not everyone wants to leave and building walls, and so on.
It is definitely something from my journey that just feels so important to stay close to you and true to you is that ideal that there is more that connects us than divides us.
For all the diversity and difference, we’re all humans and we’re all trying to do our best and be happy and healthy and we want that for our families. So I find that travelling, journeying, particularly as a soloist, you kind of need other people sometimes.
That’s been just such a great way to connect with people and meet and they kind of became the richest parts of my stories in many ways, which is stories from my journey, which was really, really important.”
Sarah setting up camp in China ready for a well deserved rest (Pic credit: Sarah Outen)
#protectivebarriers
The years-long delay in the production of the film is because Sarah had some recovering to do. A traumatic incident during a row across the North Pacific triggered PTSD, something the now 34 year old still manages today.
At the beginning of the interview, I ask Sarah to recall what I can only describe as the ‘washing machine experience’. Mentioned in her book Dare to Do, the incident had sat with me for days after reading it.
“No,” is Sarah’s firm response.
“I get re-triggered by thinking about it,” she explains. “I can’t watch the film section about it and it was really difficult to write that part of the book at a time that was really difficult.
“So now I’ve kind of worked, best I can, to resolve some of that trauma and free myself from it.
“I’ve also had to put really strict boundaries around what I’ll talk about and not. So the book is that, the film is that, and make of it what you will.”
#thewashingmachineincident
It was one month before the London 2012 Olympic Games kicked off and Sarah was 24 days into a potential 200-day row across the North Pacific. The East Midlander was around 500 miles away from her starting point of Choshi, Japan, heading towards Vancouver, Canada, in 20-foot long high-tech boat Gulliver.
Alerted by her on-shore support team to an incoming tropical weather system she had a weighty decision to make. Sarah opted to wait out the storm.
“I have faith in Gulliver. I’ll stay.”
Email sent to her project manager on 5 June 2012 08:45 BST
Strapping herself down to her hip-width wide cabin bunk, Sarah pitched and rolled in the watertight ‘container’ for three days. She was unable to even read, listen to music or sleep.
Sips of water, boiled sweets and jerky were all the sustenance she could manage. Notes written on cabin walls reminded her to ‘breathe’ and that ‘no storm lasts for ever’. At one point, Sarah was berating herself for not investigating adult nappies while on shore.
Team, family and friends at home were waiting it out with her.
Emails home started at 8am on June 6.
“2pm ALLOK. WIND INCREASING. STRAPPED IN”
“Good luck. Stay safe.”
“THANKYOU MY FRIEND. I KNOW THIS STORM ISNT JUST STRESSFUL FOR ME. HERES TO THE OTHER SIDE.”
Sarah was due to contact them hour by hour. She did what she could.
09:27 BST 530 OK. SCARYBUTOK
10.31 BST 630 OK
11.31 BST 730 OK
“My memory of what happened over the next few days exists mainly in images and feelings. The order is jumbled and staccato. As I write this book, four years later, I am still careful not to get pulled back too deeply into where it overwhelms me.”
“Lying on the sheepskin rug and sleeping bag on my bunk, I was pinned there by the chest harness and leg strap, prone but protected, less than one inch of foam and fiberglass boat wall separating me from the chaos outside…
“Before night fall the main hatch window at my feet, which looked across the deck and bow of the boat, showed a world of white – spray, foam and waves, meaning that I couldn’t distinguish sky from sea.”
#rescuedbutdamaged
Emerging shell-shocked, Gulliver was as physically damaged as Sarah was mentally, the journey couldn’t continue and a Japanese ship picked up the traumatised adventurer. Her beloved boat and psychological team-mate was abandoned to the ocean.
“We were responsible for each other’s safety,” explains Sarah of her carbon-fibre companion.
Following a six-month stint at home, Sarah set off again. This time completing the row in September 2013, landing in Alaska after five months, having capsized five times and also got engaged.
#calmafterthestorm
So the book was written but Sarah wanted some time to find the right person to help edit the film. She needed someone who could not only portray her very personal journey but someone with whom she could safely explore the trauma she’d suffered.
During her recovery, Sarah had watched filmmaker Jen Randall’s 20-minute documentary, Operation Moffat. She knew that whoever had directed this film about witty 92-year-old Gwen Moffat, Britain’s first female mountain guide, was the person she wanted to tell her story.
Operation Moffat from Jen Randall, Light Shed Pictures on Vimeo.
#meetingofminds
Personally, I was pleased the two had discovered each other.
I’d first come across Jen at a Women’s Climbing Symposium event in Sheffield. Headed by British climber and Olympic hopeful Shauna Coxsey alongside fellow climbing friends, the event provided a platform encouraging women to join the climbing community.
Home film-maker Jen Randall (Picture credit: Jen Randall)
Jen was there to promote her debut documentary Push It, a humorous take on a rather slap dash approach to scaling the climbing community’s mecca, El Capitan. An honest, eye-opening film, it showed Jen and and a fellow random climber she’d just met, scale the 2,307m-high rock face in America’s Yosemite National Park.
Ever wondered how climbers who spend days at a time on a rock face go to the toilet? This is where you find out! I loved it.
#howtobegin
But the process of editing a solo traveller’s years-long journey is quite the undertaking. So I ask Sarah how she and Jen even began.
“Jen needed to see if I’d actually managed to shoot some decent footage. Since shooting it, there was never really a point where it was logged or sorted, it was just chuck it in a box and leave it.
“So I sent her the entirety of that box to have a look at, which was crazy… She had a little dip in and said yes, and it was a case of getting together and me saying what I wanted the film to be.”
Sarah Outen in her ‘cosy’ cabin (Pic credit: Sarah Outen)
Sarah was clear about what she was after. “I wanted it to be honest. I wanted it to reflect all the different parts of the journey – the inner journey, the outer journey. I didn’t want there to be any hyperbole. I wanted it to have a killer soundtrack. I wanted it to be creative.”
#homethefilm
Home is all of that. I’ve watched a gazillion adventure films – North of the Sun, Dugout, The Dawn Wall – and Home is right up there.
The film starts with Sarah setting off from under London’s Tower Bridge, narrating over the footage. ‘This is me,’ she begins.
“Jen wasn’t keen for me to narrate it to start with. She wanted it to be sort of an interview, which thread through the film. And I really didn’t want that…
“Then she said, ‘Well okay, how about we do a narration, so it’s just like you’re chatting to your mates on the sofa and showing them some photos? So that it’s really intimate?’
“That felt really right and so that is exactly how we did it.”
#brutallyhonest
Jen also didn’t shy away from the tricky aspects of the film, from Sarah’s trauma to the question posed to any extreme adventurer: ‘Why?’.
“She’s not afraid to ask questions that are uncomfortable, or push for answers,” says Sarah. “Like, to start with she said, ‘Why did you go on this journey?’. And I said, ‘Well for the adventure’, and all of these things. And she said, ‘Yeah, but there’s got to be something else as well. Were you running away from anything?’
“At that point I said, ‘No, I don’t think I was’. And later on, as we went through the whole process with my own processing of stuff I kind of thought, ‘Well yes, there probably was an element of keeping on the run and propagating the way that I’d always been, which was always on the go, always moving, never quite stopping to take stock of things really’.
Film-maker Jen Randall encouraged Sarah to reflect on the reasons for her trip (Pic credit: Sarah Outen)
#thewhy
In the documentary, Sarah reflects on the impact of her dad’s rheumatoid arthritis, that she watched his body crumble painfully. They were an Air Force family so she went to boarding school aged eight, and was “suddenly torn away from everything I knew and forced to get on with it. You didn’t ask for help there and failure wasn’t an option. Two ideas I still haven’t shaken.
“Since then I’ve always felt of home as simply where my family were – not always an easy place to be – especially as dad’s illness progressed.
“I’m on this journey to feel alive,” she concludes. “Spinning my wheels is like a meditation.”
#filmmakingchoices
Trying to work out how to illustrate Sarah’s mental decline during the North Pacific ocean row was a challenge for both the expedition side and film-maker. Jen had to tread carefully around Sarah’s ongoing fragility.
“When I was trying to give Jen a sense of what it felt like at those times, and in the breakdown, one of the representations for me is scribbling out on a page. You know if you get say a biro or a coloured crayon and you scribble so hard it can cut through the page and it makes a dent?
“And in some of those times, that’s what it feels like. Like I’m getting scribbled over by this great pressure or I want to do that to myself, scribble myself out in a way.
“So in talking about that we… I think it was me that said it would be great to… because we wanted to have some animation that it would be great to scribble over the page. And we found, after quite a search, we found an animation house that just kind of… l, we just loved what they did and the style of it and the style of the maps.
“So that was really important to us to have really beautiful artwork to weave into it to animate the maps themselves and the stormy bits and scribbly bits.”
#softlysoftly
“I feel like I learned a lot from her and she was super fun. She’s got a brilliant brain both creatively and strategically and she was just a beautiful human to have alongside when things got difficult.
“I said I’m not going to talk about the storm stuff. It was really, really difficult at certain points when we did have to work on the storm stuff and I was kind of in breakdown mode.
“So to not totally freak out when your protagonist is freaking out and just have faith that it’s going to be okay in the end that was really reassuring.
“And we sort of worked out ways for the narration. For example, when I had to be in a recording booth to talk those words over the top of it. We just worked out I wouldn’t watch the pictures but have someone fast forward over that bit.
“They’d just be popping the light on and off at different points where I needed to say the words. There was no straightforward route to any of it. It’s about finding a way.”
#concludingchapter
Sarah is putting herself in the spotlight now to publicise Home, a film of which she is extremely proud. Justifiably it is receiving many plaudits and awards as we head into film festival season. Home is the winner of Best Exploration and Adventure Film at the prestigious Banff Mountain Film Festival 2019, among other awards.
In combinng with Jen, Sarah has found someone who not only understood the journey but was able to do the story justice by adapting to some challenging parameters.
“I knew that this would be the final piece of this storytelling. Coming back from the journey the focus was on everything else but making a film. I had a book deal, I got ill, I needed to give talks about it and things. I just had this sense of, ‘Well, I’m going to wait until I’ve found the right person to make the film with.”
Mission accomplished Sarah, mission accomplished.
PS Hope you managed to find some more jam jars!
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Interview with Sarah Davis just before she heads off to kayak down the Nile
Freya Hoffmeister on her kayak around South America… yes, the whole flipping thing!
