Sally’s Odd at Sea by Sally Kettle
A Tale of Determination Sets the Scene for a Row Across the Atlantic
Sally rows across the Atlantic Ocean from the Spanish Canary Island of La Gomera to Barbados not once but twice; a 2-woman team with her mother and then as 4-woman team
Sally’s Odd at Sea by Sally Kettle is a bit of an odd book. It’s long and slow just like the ocean rowing trips Sally undertook. We get a lowdown, an almost daily log of life drifting along during many weeks of endless ocean and little happening.
But it doesn’t start there, the book begins with a very long winded introduction to why and how Sally, with her mother, became the first mother and daughter team to row the Atlantic Ocean.
The Ocean Rowing Society (ORS) keeps records of every Atlantic crossing and through this society Sally found Challenge Business which ran bi-annual races across the seas.
The next race was in a year and a half’s time, so Sally takes us through the whole procedure of getting fit, learning to row, finding sponsors for their attempt starting from the Canary Islands crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Barbados.
Rowing the Atlantic Ocean
As everyone can imagine after endless weeks in a tiny boat things get a bit fraught, and the sight of land is in your dreams. That’s just what it’s like slogging through this book, log after log and email after email of not very much really.
Flying knickers on the flag pole, sore backsides from too much sitting and rowing as well as army rations of dehydrated packet meals.
Still plenty of bonding went on eventually between mother and daughter, their trip certainly was an endurance and wasn’t a laugh a minute. Just like the book.
It’s a well-written story and a tale worth telling but certainly should have been shortened by a mile. After the success of the first two-woman trip, Sally decides she needs to do the whole thing again.
Recruiting her crew to make a female four wasn’t an easy chore, but it stretched the book even more to drag the tale along as gently as when the drag-anchor is out. Then fitness sessions girly-fallouts and new boyfriends later the whole ocean going voyage starts again.
This book is large, pretty thick and a really good dose of patience is needed to complete the endurance to its finish, although it is nicely presented it’s not cheap at £ 12.99.
The colour photo’s at the half-way mark were a nice and welcome touch to alleviate the slog and put some faces to names, a lot more would have been nice.
This is a book that hasn’t made the re-read pile and won’t make the must recommend pile either, but it did get finished.
Sally’s Odd at Sea is a paperback of 374 pages and is published by Orana Publishing, 2007. ISBN 978-9550751-5-5
