It is irrelevant that this story takes place in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, three weeks out to sea, thousands of miles still to row. It could be a silent, scorching desert. A desert or the howling emptiness of the vast frozen Greenland ice cap. The allure is the same. The horror is the same. The wonder is the same.

The minutiae of the daily worries and discomfort differ, certainly. (What is worse – heat or cold? soaking wet or parched with thirst? sand in your underwear or vomiting in the gunwales? Answer: the ‘œworst’ is the one you are experiencing right now. Right now when you feel certain that life can never be worse than this). But these things are only ever a sideshow to the main event of these inherently pointless activities. Or, more precisely, pointless but meaningful. If they were not meaningful – or purported to be, why would generation after generation feel the need to leave warm homes and safe harbours and cast out into the empty places?

I have been in wild places by myself. And I have been in them with other people. The experiences are very different, though neither is ‘œbetter’ nor ‘œworse’. I rowed 3000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean with three other men. I was drafted into the project at extremely short notice. I met one of my crewmates briefly and agreed to join the crew. The others I did not meet until the start line. To put to sea in a tiny rowing boat with strangers requires a lot of trust and a degree of hope. Our sanity, our jokes and stories for 45 days, our very lives were in each other’s hands. There’s a lot of trust there.

Part of the appeal of rowing an ocean is the extraordinary cumulative power of what happens when you dip an oar into the sea several times a minute, every single minute, day and night, for a month and a half. By such tiny deeds are oceans crossed. Even looking back I find the concept of setting out in an 8-metre rowing boat to attempt to cross the Atlantic Ocean to be both preposterous and audacious in equal measure.

Before you row an ocean you can accurately predict the difficulties. Seasickness. Debilitating sleep deprivation. The grinding pain of open sores on your buttocks and having to sit on those sores whilst you row for 12 hours every day. Storms. The feeling of helplessness locked in the tiny cabin as huge waves smash the boat. Boredom. Brief panics at the prospect of being run down by huge ships who cannot see you. Jumping overboard to scrub the hull and contemplating sharks. Dehydrated food. Knowing that you are never more than one stumble away from falling overboard and – especially at night – probable death.

But toughest of all is the inability to step away from your situation. Cabin fever. Quite literally. In a desert or in the Arctic you can walk away from your camp and put some physical distance between you and your companions, or between you and your tent. It’s an escape of sorts, a chance to let off steam. But rowing an ocean not only gnaws at you because of the vast emptiness you are helplessly in the middle of. It also chews up because of the tiny cell you are incarcerated in. All around you is death, water water you cannot drink nor survive in without the boat for very long. Neither Claustrophobics nor Agoraphobics need apply.

This crazy cocktail though is what made rowing the Atlantic such a special experience. The sea sickness passes, you adapt to the lack of sleep, magic pink pills ease the pain. And all that remains is perspective. Because to be isolated for so long on a flat blue disc, thousands of miles from land, with a view unchanged since the day the planet began was extraordinary. Experiencing that vastness, and the sense it gave of life’s fragility and glory, was one of the greatest privileges of my life. Sometimes you need to take a step further away to take something in completely, to focus properly. The ocean helped me to evaluate what were the important things in my life. The simplicity of the days also helped me remember what was not important in my life. Modern life has a tendency to be busy and cluttered and full without always being fulfilling. The empty ocean clarified what I should reduce, cut out or leave behind. Sometimes less is more.

And to experience that vastness (and the sense it gives of life’s fragility and glory), within arm’s reach – quite literally – of your crewmates whom you mutually depend on not only to cross the ocean but actually to stay alive, is very special. I have never laughed more in all my life than on that boat, never listened to more stories and more viewpoints, never trusted people so much nor worked so hard to earn trust and respect in return, never consciously spent such a span of time being careful not only to not annoy my fellow man, but to actively help them and make their days better at all times. This is a good way to live.

And I don’t think I need to explain how good the real world appeared when we disembarked, wobbly kneed, bearded and emaciated? The green of trees, the smell of barbecues, eye contact with beautiful women, the power of music and the crisp, sharp intoxicating coldness of that first sip of beer…

An abbreviated form of this piece recently appeared in Port Magazine.