Chris Bertish – Big Waves, Big Ocean, and Big Dreams

Guy Kawasaki:
I'm Guy Kawasaki, and this is Remarkable People. This episode's guest is Chris Bertish, a South African surfer, paddleboarder, and sailor. Among his many accomplishments, he won the 2010 Mavericks Big Wave Invitational Surfing Contest. He almost died that day, but he didn't let that minor detail stop him.
In 2017, he completed a solo, 4700-mile, ninety-three-day journey, from Morocco to Antigua on a paddleboard. This set a Guinness World Record for the first solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean on a stand-up paddleboard.
Millions of people are experiencing isolation because of the coronavirus. In this podcast, you'll learn what it takes to survive ninety-three days of isolation on a paddleboard in the Atlantic Ocean.
By the way, do you know why it's unwise to catch and eat fish as your paddling across the Atlantic? Keep listening to learn why this is true.
A few explanatory notes. Bertish refers to Jeff several times in this interview. This would be Jeff Clark, the person who discovered Mavericks and surfed it alone for years. A school of dorado fish escorted Bertish. Dorado is another name for mahi-mahi. They are typically fifteen to thirty pounds and three feet in length.
A leash is the long chord that surfers wrap around their ankle or calf at one end and connect to their surfer board or paddleboard at the other end. In this case, though, Bertish attached one end to his vest. Buckle your seat belts because you're about to learn what it takes to win Mavericks and paddle across the Atlantic Ocean.

I'm Guy Kawasaki, and this is Remarkable People. And now, here's Chris Bertish.

Chris Bertish:
I remember just realizing that in order to become one of the best, I couldn't do what everyone else was doing because I wasn't a paid-professional athlete, so I need to do things differently. So I remember working out from different aspects of all the different facets of big wave surfing, “How I could distinguish myself from everyone else?” And I just looked at the physical aspect, I looked at the mental aspect, I looked at the equipment, and then I looked at the locations, and I broke it down into those four aspects of it, and then I decided to try and work on each aspect and focus on each aspect of those to become the best I could be in each one of those four elements to be able to separate myself from everyone else.
So I looked at the equipment, and I was using really, really small equipment. I refined that equipment.
A lot of people don't use small boards in big waves because it means you get in later and it means that you are in way more critical situation, but I figured out that if I was using smaller boards, I could surf differently to everyone else, and then if big wave surfing was judged on how critical and how late you could take the drop and complete it successfully, I knew that if could do that, so if I could use those boards successfully, I would be able to distinguish myself from everyone else out there. But that would mean that I would have to be so confident in my physical ability.
So I believe that physical fitness breeds mental confidence. So I went about designing and developing my own version of training to be able to make me as stupidly, ridiculously fit as I could be across all different elements. In this day and age now, in almost 2020, there's always big wave athletes that are now doing these apnea training courses and these rudiment training courses and what have you, but in 2000, there wasn't anything like that that existed.
In my training that I developed for myself was very unique and no one was doing it. I actually ended up training alongside in the pool with one of the Freediving World Champions in South Africa.
One day, she was like, "Ah, I see you training every day. That's amazing. I'm training for the world championship and I'm training for freediving, but I see you doing these underwater apnea training. I've never seen anyone else do that. Well, what do you training for?" And I said, "I'm training for big wave season." She said, "Wow. I've never seen any surfer ever train like you train." I said, "Well, this is the second time I've been at the pool today." And she's like “...” So I said, "I train in the morning before work between 5:00 and 6:00. And then I go to work, work a full day, and then I can train after work as well."
I think what I figured out from that, I was training twice a day, six days a week, and eighty percent of that was pool training, and sixty percent of the pool training I was doing was all apnea-underwater training, and I got to a point that when I went over in 2001-- it's a very difficult space to try and put into words-- I got to a point where I was so fit across swimming, running, underwater training, that I was just oozing confidence. I felt like I was invisible, and it's a good thing and a bad thing.
It's a double-edge sword because when you get into that space, then you literally believe that you are superman and you can achieve anything so you do things that you never normally would do because you are so confident within yourself that you cannot fail. So you put yourself in places that you should never be in, and because you're so confident with yourself that ninety-nine percent of the time, you make it out, and then if you don't, you're so fit and you've got such a confidence within yourself that you normally get yourself out of situations that you shouldn't either.
Guy Kawasaki:
How many miles were you running a day? How far were you swimming? Were you swimming sprints? Were you swimming long-distance?
Chris Bertish:
Yeah. I mean, it's such an interesting combination. So I work out a program that takes me about six months to get from base fitness to peak fitness. If your base fitness is really good, you can do it within three to four months, but I basically learnt-- and you get so in tune with your body and so in tune with your mind that-- I could have one beer at night and I could feel it in my system and I could feel it in the consequences on my training for the next five days onwards.
When you're so in tune with your body that you can feel those kinds of things and the significant impact that even just one beer would have on your system, it's quite remarkable that you can notice your performance levels on that sort of scale. I think I was doing three to five days a week I was running probably short distances, five miles kind of thing, and then I was in the pool every day, twice a day, six days a week and I was doing at least a mile underneath the water. Obviously not once off but…
Jeremy:
That would be something.
Chris Bertish:
... I was doing a little over a mile underneath the water, and then I'll do above the water training, and then had different sprint regimes that would basically mimic what would happen if I got caught inside by a five-wave set, and then I would also mimic what would happen if I fell, taken off on a wave, and not get a full breath and then still get hammered by a wave and then the multiple waves afterwards and mimic what would happen in all the different scenarios.
So I basically mimicked every single worst-case scenario of training at your extreme level in that capacity where you're not getting a lot of breath.
Guy Kawasaki:
Don't you think that most people train for the best case. A lot of what you just described is for the worst case, right? When you fell, when you're pulled down there and all that as opposed to the wave you catch and ride.
Chris Bertish:
Well, that, that you just get from experience. That comes from being out there, but how do you preplan for when things go right, is easy because you're planning for that when you're out in the ocean and whatever the twenty, thirty years of experience that you've done up to that point should train you for that.
But what gives you the confidence to be able paddle into a wave and put yourself in harm’s way, take off in a critical place, that only comes from a confidence that you have that you can get from knowing that you can sustain yourself for an extended period of time underneath the water and knowing that you'll survive, and knowing that you've done absolutely everything in your physical and mental and emotional space to be ready for that situation.
So I always work on a philosophy which is, "Plan for the worst and hope for the best." Because if you plan for every single worst-case scenario, then you've minimized the risk and you can proceed with confidence and then your outcome generally-
Guy Kawasaki:
So-
Chris Bertish:
So I'm seeing that I'm still here, it means that my training regime worked.
Guy Kawasaki:
You're right. Yes.
Bring us to that specific contest. What happened there?
Chris Bertish:
I tried to save up to be at that event. I made the top twenty-four. It'd taken ten years to get to that point. I tried to come over for the time period that it was going to be to what where they had possibly run the event over a two-month period where the likelihood was the highest, and I had done fundraisers at home in order to be able to raise enough money. I think my biggest sponsor, their donation to me going over and representing my country was giving two wetsuits towards my trip. That's the definition of sponsorship in my country.
Yeah. It's pretty self-destroying. But I think what I've learnt by being a South African is that because you have to work so hard at creating the opportunity for yourself that it makes you incredibly driven and incredibly focused.
So when you do get the opportunity, you put everything on the line to make it count because you know that that might be your one and only last chance, and that's why I've always believed, I always support the underdog, because the underdog-- never discard the underdog because the underdog will do everything in his power to rise above its normal level and standard to be able to do things that many normally would never be able to achieve because it knows that it'll do whatever it has to do to be able to succeed.
Guy Kawasaki:
Do you think that too much money is worse than too little then?
Chris Bertish:
Yes. Definitely. For sure because you don't have the passion and you don't have the grits and the courage and the determination that really drives you. When you've got everything on a golden platter, it's hard to have that same mindset where you've had to fight from scratch to be able to get that opportunity and no matter what happens, you're going to give it everything you've got, and you're going to show up at your best and go beyond normal and become the most extraordinary version of yourself that you can be in order to ensure the best possible outcome.
I was here for about a month, and they didn't have the event, and I was trying to stay the whole time, and then my girlfriend, my partner at the time, got diagnosed with really hectic, life-threatening illness and I had to fly back. So I actually ended up deciding to fly back and look after her through surgery and everything else.
And that pretty much took-- It was on Christmas Day that I flew back. And I had to get on literally and find out that morning, I had to try and get on a flight that afternoon, and in our world, those tickets are really expensive, and on Christmas Day, it's probably the worst time you can fly home. So it cost me more than around the world ticket to be able to fly home.
I spent two months looking after her, and it pretty much drained every single bit of money that I had in my life, and I remember being in one of the sales appointments. I was looking after multiple different brands as a sales agent at the time, and I was with my sister; we were selling Crocs at the time…
Guy Kawasaki:
Crocs?
Chris Bertish:
Don't judge me.
Guy Kawasaki:
Crocs?
Chris Bertish:
I remember I was speaking to a client and it was about three days before the end of the waiting period, I realized that everything I had dreamed of, this was the last year that I decided that I was going to put everything into trying to get into the event and if it didn't happen, then that was going to be it for me. And I remember looking down my ATM bank slip underneath the table while we are selling to the client, and I remember I was overdrawn to the absolute max across every single one of my accounts, and I had the equivalent of 321 Rand to my name, which is the equivalent of probably about $140 left to my name. That wasn't enough. It wasn't even that. That was less. It was ridiculous. It was, like, twenty-five dollars to my name.
I was trying to think of how I was going to get through the rest of the week, let alone the rest of the month, and that's when I got a phone call from Jeff. I saw his number and I excused myself and then he said, "Hey, listen. I don't know if you realize there's a giant swell on the forecast. Is there any way you can be able to get here if we decide to call it?" And I said, "Well, I'm completely broke. I've no idea how I'll make it happen but if we call it and you think it's going to happen, I'll find a way." And put down the phone, and he said, "Well, you'll be looking to start looking at flights." So I've put down the phone and I apologized to my client, I said, "Sorry, I've got to go and just quickly fly to America."
I think he thought it was an April Fools' joke. And I said, "No, really, I've actually got to walk out now and fly to America." And my sister took over. I walked downstairs, got in my car and drove straight to the airport. I think a lot of people don't understand, especially in this country that I'm flying from South Africa. It's probably one of the furthest place in the world that you can possibly fly, and there are only a couple of flights that are going to get you here in time if you need to be here in forty-eight hours because it can sometimes take forty-two hours, also, to get here.
I kept my bag with my passport and all my gear in my backpack ready the whole time that I was back home, just in case that phone call happened. So my boards were in there, my wetsuit was in my car, my bag with my passport, everything was ready. So I walked downstairs, got in my car and drove straight to the airport.
While I'm driving to the airport, I phone my brother works in travel and I said, "Please see if you can find me a flight that's going to get me there in time because I'm actually on the way to the airport now." And just before I got into the airport, he phoned me back. He said, "Christian, you won't believe it. There's one flight that if you need to get there in the next forty-eight hours, that will get you there in time. There's one seat left on the flight, and you have to check in within the next twenty-five minutes. So unless you're on the way to the airport or you're coming into there, there's no way you're going to make it.” And I said, "I'm actually just pulling into the airport right now."
I ended up going into the airport and just grabbing my board bag, and running through, and it was like Moses and the parting the sea because I was running through my-- People were flying everywhere, trying to get the hell away this giant coffin board bag I was dragging around with me and got to the counter and then phoned up Jeff. I said, "Hey, listen, what's the story? I've got to get on the flight. There's only one and it's going to get me there in time. It's closing in fifteen minutes. There's one seat on the flight. I have to make a call." And Jeff turned around me and he said, "We're having a little bit of trouble making that decision this year. If you phone me back in two or three hours-time, I'll be able to let you know."
Clearly, that was the wrong thing to say because that was it. That was that moment of truth in that junction that I think sometimes in life we all get to.
And it's what you do with that decision, I think that defines you and defines a lot of the outcomes and sometimes you just have to have the courage to be able to step beyond your fears and find out what lies beyond, and if you've worked on something for so long, I think-- I always try and look at every single situation that I need to make a decision and think to myself. If I look back on the situation in five or ten years-time with the decision that I'm willing to make and the choice that I'm about to make, would I ever regret the decision that I made?
So I thought to myself, "Okay. If I didn't make a plan and get on this flight right now, and I find out in forty-eight hours, that they ran the event and I had missed that one opportunity, I would never forgive myself for the rest of my life." So I was like, "Okay, screw it. I'm going no matter what."
I phoned my brother, I said, "Hey, listen. Can you book that flight?" And he's like, "Yeah, yeah. It's cool. Give me your card number." I said, "No, no. Use your card." And he didn't have enough money either, and I ended borrowing money from three different friends to be able to get the money in that moment to be able to jump on that plane and get that flight out.
So I flew out on that flight without even knowing if the event was going to run, and while I was in the air between Cape Town to Joburg, Joburg to Amsterdam. While I was in the air in Amsterdam, I had this horrible epiphany where I realized that if I got to Amsterdam and found out that Jeff hadn't called the event on, I didn't even have enough money across all my different accounts to be able to change my flight to be able to even fly back home, and that's when you are the definition of what I call "all in."
I believe that everything that's happened in my life since that point and everything that I've been successful with has been with that sort of mindset. It's been putting everything on the line for what you believe in, and the next book that I'm writing is called ALL IN!
I mean, that's on the transatlantic, and it's actually coming from-- there's another term for it which is a monk state, which is called a maksud state, which means that you give up and you put everything on the line for what you believe in, and it's a very powerful space because you go to extraordinary lengths because you let go of everything that's important to you and you're so passionate about what you believe in that you're prepared to die for what you believe, no matter what. Generally, when you ever put yourself in that space, you always succeed because failure is not an option. Yeah.
So I ended up finding out when I got to Amsterdam that they had called the event on, and then I flew from Amsterdam to I think it was Houston, and as we're coming into Houston, I had one connection that would just get me there in time, and it was the storm that was hitting the West Coast causing these massive waves. It caused a massive snowstorm in Dallas.
I arrived in, and the announcement was that they're going to possibly close the airport, and I got into America for the first time, and when I get into American immigration, then I get stuck in the cue for two hours, and I'm just watching the time disappear between my flight and boarding.
I finally got through immigration. I literally left my Crocs right there on the floor and went across two different terminals and literally just as I got to the-- they're calling my name to deplane me, and as I got to the air hostess, she was like, "Ah, Mr. Bertish, we've been waiting for you. We're just about to offload you off the plane." And then she took my ticket and she was like, "Oh. Oh, there's a problem with your ticket. Some of these tickets that we have from the long-haul flights, they don't check you through all the way through. So there's a bit of a problem with the ticket. What you need to do is you need to go outside the terminal to the external check-in branch. You need to change your ticket and then get another flight out in the morning." And I was like, "No, no. No, it doesn't work like that. I have to get on this flight. This is the only flight that will get me there in time for the Olympics of big wave surfing. You don't understand. You have to get me on this flight." And she was like, "No, sorry. There's nothing I can do about this. We've seen this happen. The flight is now closed, there's nothing I can do about it."
I went down on my knees and I said, "Please, you don't understand! I've been on this journey for the last ten years. You have to let me on this flight. So I don't know if you watched the movie, The Terminal with Tom Hanks. If you don't let me on this flight, I'm going to be roaming your airport for the next five years stealing hamburgers and cheese burgers from you because I can't even fly back home." And either she was scared of me or she suddenly felt sorry for me, and I think sometimes in life, you meet these people that have had some similar experience, and suddenly they click into a different gear and they realize that then you need help.
Her name was Grace. Amazing Grace, and she ended up saying, "Hold on a second. Let me see what I can do." And she ran down the little tunnel, and three minutes later, she came back with a naughty grin on her face and she looked at me and she said, "Ah, Mr. Bertish. I'm going to remember that name. I want you to go and do me proud. I've done something very special for you." And she ended up making a plan to put me on the jump seat on that flight, which I still don't know how that happened.
Guy Kawasaki:
Sound a little illegal. Yeah.
Chris Bertish:
Yeah. But somehow, we made it work and I got on the flight and flew the next part of the route to San Francisco. It had taken me forty-two hours and transfers and stuff to get there and then I arrived at 1:00 in the morning, and the event was now going to start at 7:00 or 7:30 or whatever, and I arrived, and we waited for the baggage carousel for the stuff to arrive and through all things come and newer things go…
Guy Kawasaki:
No board…
Chris Bertish:
No bags. So I learnt from a guy called Clark Abein in Hawaii. He's like, "Don't panic after you’ve panicked."
Then I realize, "Okay, I don't have my bags." It just has all the stuff that normal human beings have like clothes and t-shirts and all the stuff that we normally have, but then I realized that I actually had my wetsuit and I had my two leashes, big wave leashes and what have you. I was like, "Okay. Now, I can borrow a wetsuit. I can manage. As long as my boards arrive, we're good." So I waited the baggage oversize for the stuff to come and all the golf clubs and canoes and stuff come and go, and come and go. No boards.
So I went to the baggage-handling guy and I was like, "Please, you got to tell me. This big board bag, it's a coffin with three finely-tuned, big wave Mavericks kinds being designed and built for this wave, for this location, for this event that I've been trying to get into for the last ten years. They must be out there. You can't lose them." He's like, "Sometimes they just don't make the connection. I'm sure you can just rent one from the beach." And I was like, "Rent one from the beach?! What you're trying to say to me is, like, I've arrived at the showjumping Olympics, and you've lost my horse and you're telling me to rent a donkey or a goat to compete? That's what you're telling me?"
Yeah. It was just an incredible journey and then I ended up realizing that none of my equipment arrived. Nothing arrived. So I literally had the shirt on my back, and in jeans, and a warm top, and that's all I had.
Guy Kawasaki:
Whose board did you borrow?
Chris Bertish:
I had just arrived for the biggest event of my entire life and little did I know that it was going to be one of the biggest days in surfing history. I didn't have enough money to get a taxi so I phoned Jeff. Jeff came to pick me up, go back to his place about 2:00 in the morning, slept for what seemed like minutes and got up at 5:30. Borrowed one of his boards and I had a back-up wetsuit that I had here and managed to go get some booties and leashes and stuff, and altogether, then went down.
I thought I had won the Amazing Race just getting to the beach that day.
Guy Kawasaki:
It seems to me that that whole story, it contradicts what every parent would say. Right? "You got to get a good-night sleep. You got to get a good breakfast. You have to have your equipment all prepared and ready. You need to be able to focus on a thing." You had none of that, and you won. So what's the lesson?
Chris Bertish:
So the lesson is, I think for the two years before, I had prepared to try to make things as difficult for myself, become accustomed to the most difficult and challenging conditions across everything that I did. I tried lots of different boards, I'd work with Jeff on one of the first computer shapes.
So he had my files and stuff in the system, and even though the board that I borrowed wasn't my one, it was off one of the first designs and shapes that were. So I knew that the rocker was the same, I knew that the outline was roughly the same, and I've been using his boards now for almost ten years. So I had a really good feel for the equipment. I had left the backup wetsuit just as a worst-case scenario. He had backup boot and stuff.
And I had tried to go out at Mavericks in the most difficult and challenging conditions no matter what and using lots of different equipment. We were talking about it earlier, I think planning for the worst and hoping for the best. Knowing that you’ve prepared no matter what worst-case scenario throws at you, and then remaining true to what you set your mind to achieve, no matter what.
I was walking through the contest area and that massive wave hit the contests whole site, and washed away, like, I don't know, 100 odd spectators, and now dropped all my equipment, and held my board with one arm, two kids over the other. It wasn't really how you'd normally prepare for the biggest event from your life. It was crazy.
And then when I got onto the water, I just remember putting that contest vest on, and it was like everything just really calm and went quiet even though these massive bombs were hitting all around us, and the waves were breaking in places that none of us had ever experienced. They were breaking 200 to 300 yards further out than any time we had ever been out there before. So all the line ups that we have used, normally, to be able to line up and be in the right place for surfing these giant waves were completely irrelevant.
We had built those line ups for ourselves for over ten, fifteen years of surfing experience, and they were all null and void because the waves were so exponentially larger than anything we had ever paddled at that particular point, and then within the first, I got one small wave which was, I don't know, thirty, forty-foot face, or whatever relative to the day, and then by ten minutes into that heat, we got caught inside by, and still to this day, the biggest wave that I've ever seen, landed literally ten feet in front of us.
And that's the time when you think to yourself, "I've done every single thing in my power to be ready for this exact moment. This is what you've trained for." And that's not the time when you think to yourself, "I shouldn't have had those ten tequilas last night. Maybe I should have paid more time in the pool." You've trained your last fifteen years for that moment.
Guy Kawasaki:
How big was that wave that you got?
Chris Bertish:
It was at least sixty feet that landed right in front of us. Yeah.
Guy Kawasaki:
So when you-
Chris Bertish:
It dragged me almost a mile underneath water.
Jeremy:
It dragged you almost a mile?
Chris Bertish:
And I lost the ability to be able to use my arms and legs, and lost the ability to be able to even swim. So when your body start shutting down in order to main functions, in order to survive-
Guy Kawasaki:
Survive.
Chris Bertish:
... all it's doing is it's limiting your use of your arms and legs, and then it limits your ability to be able to speak because all it's doing is taking all the blood from all its extremities into protecting and looking after the heart in order to keep it going and so it's only focusing on breathing, then you know you're pretty close to death.
Guy Kawasaki:
I can tell you, when I see a six-foot wave, it scares the shit out of me, and I won't go out, okay? So how are you different than most people who have that reaction? They won't go out. It's too scary. But you, you see that as an opportunity. Is it mental? Are you crazy? Am I a coward? What's the difference between you and me?
Chris Bertish:
No. I find that it's an interesting question, Guy, and I find it fascinating, because a lot of people would look at people that are doing extreme things, and to them, it seems crazy, but it's only crazy according to your frame of reference. So it's “What is your frame of reference in regarding to what is normal and what is extraordinary and what is then superpower ability or that level of extreme athlete that you think is crazy?” But I think I never went from surfing one-foot waves to sixty-foot waves. It was a gradual progression of keep on incrementally pushing your boundaries and pushing your limits.
And every time you got into a fearful state, you push your limit a little bit further than that, and then you got a little bit scared, but then you went back and you did it again and again until your comfort zone shifted and your new normal and your new frame of reference shifted incrementally, and if you keep on doing that over an extended period of time, suddenly, no one sees the jump from one-foot waves to four-foot waves. All they see is you surfing sixty-foot waves, and that seems crazy to them but they had never followed the journey and seen how long it took you to get to that point, and how many five-foot waves, and how many ten-foot waves, how many twelve-foot waves, how many fifteen-foot waves, how many twenty-foot waves and so and so on, and I think you can apply that to literally anything.
All of us have fear. Fear is common to everyone. It's just how you manage that fear, how you process that fear, and how you turn adversity or challenge or fear to your advantage. If you realize that fear is one of the greatest tools to be able to harness your own personal, greatest potential focus, your energy focus, your mind and extrapolate any of your normal functions to a heightened state, to be able to do something that you should not normally able to achieve because you have endorphins, then you have adrenaline that then harness your immense and most extraordinary power in yourself as a human being to do things that you shouldn't normally do.
Once you learn to be able to harness that, manage that, process that, and regulate it in a very systematic way, then you can really go beyond what most people normally don't think is possible. When you realize that that process puts you in a space and a place that allows you to do that, then you almost want to unlock that on a regular basis because it makes you realize what you can achieve if you learn to be able to manage that new ability.
Most people use fear as something that paralyzes them not go forward but if you use fear as an enhancer and you realize that it's actually reminding you that you're on the right track and you need to keep on going forward because it's beyond your fears and beyond that comfort zone, that's where the magic happens and that's where your greatest potential lies, just beyond that fear, beyond that comfort zone. And that's where you get into a state where flow is possible, where your greater self is possible, where you evolve, where you learn, where you grow and that's where life happens, in those moment.
I think I had about five waves that I had land on my head, and when people talk about not having nothing left, I don't think people really realize what that actually means. When your body starts shutting down all its functions, that's when you know that you have nothing left.
I remember the last wave that went over me, I was trying to get to the surface and I couldn't get to the surface and I finally got up, and then I could see one of the ski guard drivers coming in. One ski driver got taken out by one of the waves, and the next were behind, I was trying to hold my hand above the water so he could come and get me. And I remember trying to take one more stroke to keep my head above the water and that's when I realized my body wasn't responding at all and it's a terrifying thing to have that sensations where you're telling your body to keep your head above the water by taking a stroke and you're telling it to do something and it doesn't respond.
You feel yourself sinking underneath the water and there's nothing you can do about it no matter what you're telling your body to do, and I remember, just thinking, "Okay, well, if he doesn't get me, I'm done." And apparently, literally just my hand was sticking out of the water. That's it, and one of the rescue guys came up and grabbed my hand, Frank, pulled me out of the water straight on to the back of the sled. Massive white water came over us, and I remember just being bouncing around on the back of the sled and he's still holding me on with one hand and he shout at me, "Hold on, hold on." And that was one thing I couldn't do because I couldn't even move my arms and legs.
We eventually came out of the white water, and we bounced out into the channel. And we're on the way out to the channel and he is looking down to me, because he could see I was just completely... There was nothing left in me and he was shouting at me, "Do you want me to take you to the paramedics? Do you want me to take you to the paramedics?" I remember looking up and trying to get out of my mouth, "Yes or no." But nothing would come out.
It's quite an interesting thing that you try and understand what's happening in your system, in that moment, when you're telling your body to do things and they're not responding. Even right down to the point that you're trying to speak and nothing comes out of your mouth.
We got to the back line and he's going to drop me off at the paramedic. And will have you know, there's another set that came in, and two other guys were caught inside. I was like, "Urgh." I just managed to get enough energy to responding to him. I said, "Look, just drop me on the backup board here. I'll be fine." And he said, "Yeah, yeah, I'll come back and get you." He turns around and he went off to go and save some other people and I just remember lying on my backup board and lying, literally, faced down on my board with my arms hanging over. Literally face down almost like a corpse, and I thought to myself, "Well that's it. I'm done. I've come as close to drowning as a human being can come without actually blacking out completely."
I remember lying there just getting my breath and trying to process how much time there was in the heat and everything else and I was like, "Hold on a second." And I had this flashback of a picture that my dad gave me that was on my wall in my room when I used to study for exams. He had it on his business desk before he passed away. It was a picture of a frog, and the frog is getting eaten by a stork. I don't know if you've ever seen it before, where he's halfway down the stork's throat and he's got his little arms outside the stork's throat and he's throttling the stork, and underneath it, it says, "Never ever, ever give up."
And I remember just having such a clear and vivid realization of that, and I'm like, "You know what? I'm halfway down the stork's throat, but you know what? I'm not dead yet,” and I never want to look back in ten years-time in this same situation and say, “I never tried." So no matter how long it's going to take for me to paddle back out to the back line, whether I don't get another wave or not is irrelevant but I'll take whatever it needs to take to be able to get me back in line so I'll never be able to look back and say, “I never tried.”
It literally took me almost fifty minutes of the rest of the heat almost to get. It was about four and a half minutes left on the heat but somehow got to the back. So it took me three times longer than I normally did and I remember sitting so far wide because I knew that if I caught by another wave, it wasn't a matter of if it might be a fifteen percent chance that I might survive. There was zero chance. There wasn't one percent. There wasn't ten. It was zero chance that I would survive if I ever got caught by another wave because I was so physically drained.
I remember sitting up on the board, seeing the guy sitting where the waves are breaking and I looked down at my watch and it was four minutes and 20 seconds left, and I was like, "Okay, well, that's done. I've done everything in my power to do what I'd said I was going to do. I'll never look back and say I never tried. I made it out here and…
Guy Kawasaki:
Sitting on your board?
Chris Bertish:
So I was sitting there and I was just waiting and I also thought, "Okay, well, that's it.” End of the day, I know that I'll never look back, and everyone back home will be like, “Jeez. Amazing that he even paddled back out.'" All the people that got caught inside by that set, I was the only one that ended up paddling out afterwards. Then I saw this big set coming on the horizon, and I was like, "Okay, well, I'm safe here on the channel. Everything's good."
The first wave came in, the second wave came in, two guys caught it. The other guys were caught inside by the next one, and then the last wave of the set, for some random reason, you can call it fate, you can call it destiny, you can call it whatever you want, but it came at thirty, forty degrees. Completely different angle to all the rest of the waves and I remember seeing this wave coming, and I'm sitting way in the channel. I'm thinking to myself, "That wave is coming right towards me but there's no way a wave could ever possibly break where I am, so I'm safe here. I'm safe. I don't have to worry about it." And the wave just kept on coming and growing, growing. I was like, "Oh my God, this wave couldn't possibly break."
I thought to myself, "Well, all I'm going to do is I'm going flip around my board, I'm going to flop down and I'm going to take all the energy that I have and I'm just going to wait for the one perfect moment, and I'm going to take all the energy I have and put into one giant stroke. And if I catch it, I catch it. If I don't, I don't because that's all the energy that I have.” And I waited, and suddenly the wave picked me up. I couldn't believe that it was actually looking like it was going to break and I put all the energy, I took one stroke, and still to this day, it's the only wave I ever caught in my entire life ever like that with one stroke.
Suddenly, it got me in and I finally got to the bottom, and because it was breaking in such deep water, it didn't break as intensely. So I managed to get up and get out into the channel. And I remember pulling into the channel and just go, "Yes!" The siren went for the end of the heat and it was like I had actually won the event, but I'd actually only just survived the first heat of the day. It was fifteen minutes later when they called. I got into the boat and I was just happy to survive.
I remember them calling out the results of the heat, and they're like, "Oh, in first place, Carlos Burle, Big Wave World Champion from Brazil, and in second place, Jamie Sterling from Hawaii, and also in third place, going through to the next round, Chris Bertish from South Africa." And I was like, "Yeah." And then I was like, "Ah, no." Because I couldn't actually fathom that I'd actually made it through and I was actually going to have to go back out there and compete, like compete in the waves which were just getting bigger and bigger and they'd already got to the point that they were the biggest paddling waves in the history of big wave surfing, and then during the day, it just got bigger.
I think the most challenging thing was the next heat and trying to reset, to let go of all those fears that I had had during what had happened in that first heat, and trying, literally, to push a reset button and let go of all your fear and then refocus on what your mission and your vision was. Then my game plan for the rest of the contest became completely different. It was literally about, “Get two waves, survive, don't die, and go home.” That was game plan. That was the strategy. I don't know how many other events around the world across any sport where your strategy is, you know…
Guy Kawasaki:
Don't get killed?
Chris Bertish:
... don't die, go home, with everything attached, and that day was very unique. I was just very fortunate that I just ended up getting two really good waves in the quarters and semis.
I ended up getting barreled in the semi-finals. It got me into the finals, and then I had gotten into the final. The final, the wind had got slightly onshore. The tide had dropped, it got a little rugged and even though it was bigger than anything else that anyone has ever paddled into, I had surfed those conditions.
Most people go out and only surf Mavericks when it's clean and it's perfect even if the waves are big and stuff. I've been training in the worse conditions. I would go out there by myself when it was windy, when it was rainy. When it was all cross-shore, offshore, onshore. There would be days where I got caught in the mist and my board went around and mash on a rock, I went down on the other way around, I almost drowned. No one else around. Almost like when Jeff started surfing and that's why I think we had this amazing connection because I was doing things like he used to do in the old days.
But I think, we're talking about it, it's about resilience and it's about building up a resilience and a mindset to be able to be uncomfortable, and becoming so uncomfortable than comfortable that you can deal with change and really difficult environment so much better than anyone else because you've trained for it and you've planned for it, and I think a resilient mindset is about becoming uncomfortable. When becoming comfortable with the uncomfortable space.
Guy Kawasaki:
I would say, to completely changed topic, though, that in entrepreneurship, ninety-nine-point nine percent of founder’s train for when things go right.
Chris Bertish:
When things go horribly wrong?
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah, and it's all about scaling and going public and cashing out and all that. Nobody plans for “Product is late,” “Nobody's buying it,” running out of money…
Chris Bertish:
I find that quite interesting because in all the different businesses that I run, I always plan for every worse case. You try and plan for every worst-case scenario and think of what happens if things don't work out. What is your alternative? What is your solution? How do you find another way to do this? How do you find a different way to market this? How do you market this in different way to everyone else?
Guy Kawasaki:
I think it's very interesting that on the one hand, you have to be a believer and an optimist to even try. But then you have to flip that bit and plan for the worst, which I don't think people can do both!
Chris Bertish:
No. Yeah. I believe you can because I believe that there's opportunity in adversity, in everything. You look at any-- you know the talk that I was doing about unlocking your superpowers. It's about every single great entrepreneur and every single great businessmen or success story, ninety-nine-point nine percent of them, it's a story about how you've learnt and grown through your challenges, how you have turned your adversity and your greatest fears into your greatest tool and greatest superpower, yourself. And that's what separates the bests from the rest. It's how you take the feedback and the stimuli that you get that is negative and you flip it into a positive, and how you transcend that, which makes you stronger and you ended up using that as your greatest tool.
Guy Kawasaki:
Switching gears. Ninety-three days, you paddled across the Atlantic.
Chris Bertish:
Yes.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay? So most people would say that is insanely impossible. So when you think about paddling across the Atlantic, by yourself, do you simply not see the impossibility of that? Are you in denial? How does that work?
Chris Bertish:
I think you couldn't have probably said it better, but the last part of it, I don't believe. So I believe exactly as you said it.
I guess when I get something in my mind that I focus on, I've gone through all the preparations, the training to be able to get to a certain point, and then I go, "Okay, if I can do that, that and that, and if I've learnt this, this, this. If I'm doing a twelve-hour, the twenty-four-hour record, a twenty-four-hour Guinness World Record of do the seven-day-open ocean thing trip up the West Coast of South Africa, completely unsupported, unassisted, if I can do that on this board and unassisted, then if I can build the right craft where I can find solutions to the challenges that I faced on that last journey, which was, "How do I avoid getting out of the sand? How do I avoid having a solution for water and food and all those kind of things, and a place to be able to sleep to be able to remove myself from a really intense environment for short periods of time.”?
If I can find solutions for all of that, then why would I need to go up a coastline? Then, surely, I could be self-sufficient enough to be able to cross an ocean, and if I can do that-- I'd already started attaching all these projects that I did do, Operation Smile and The Lunchbox Fund which is to feed kids in Africa and pay for operation. So I figured if I could raise enough money to be able to pay for ten, twenty operations through all the stuff that I was doing and feeding 100 of kids, if I could build the right craft and I could take that line up the coastline and string it across the Atlantic and become completely self-sufficient and unsupported, then I could normally change the lives of hundreds. I could change lives of hundreds or thousands and maybe millions.
For me, it was just the next logical step, and as much as that sounds really weird to a lot of people, like, "How is it you're going from 200 miles up the coastline to go to 4500 miles across an ocean on a craft that's not even a meter wide, not even six inches above the water and is only a foot and a half longer than my normal open-ocean board?” Well, to me, there's some times in your life where you have a feeling and you just know. No matter what anyone else says, you just know that it's possible and you know you can do it. No matter what anyone else says.
And they can try and put doubt into your mind... I just knew it. I just knew it was possible and I knew that I could it no matter what anyone said.
Guy Kawasaki:
When someone who doesn't follow a sport like that sees a CNN special, "This guy just crossed the Atlantic, ninety-three days by himself paddling." They look at that and say, "That's impossible." But as you say, you started on a one-foot wave, then a four-foot wave, then a six-foot wave, then twenty-foot wave, then a sixty-foot wave. They only see the sixty-foot wave.
Chris Bertish:
Yes.
Guy Kawasaki:
And so that's a very valuable lesson. They didn't see that you went across the English Channel and then you went...
Chris Bertish:
Yeah. They didn't see the English Channel. They didn't see the twelve-hour records. They didn't see the twenty-four-hour records. They didn't see the 350ks that I did up the wild and all that stuff that I learnt along and all the lessons that I could apply and all the foundation that I've built.
They didn't know that I've been sailing all my life and I had done multiple transatlantic crossings on a yacht. I'd surfed and sailed in Morocco. I'd surfed and sailed in the Canary Islands. I've surfed and sailed in Antigua.
All the location that I left from Morocco and I was going past the Canary Islands, so just in case there was a massive problem and I needed an exit strategy, I knew the different location. I knew Antigua because I had raced and sailed there. I had surfed there.
So everything is part of... Every single cog in that little mechanical engine, I had experience and I had gone through. The only thing I hadn't done was paddle this little craft that had never been designed before that we designed using all my sailing experience, all my surfing experience, all my big wave surfing experience and all my stand-up paddleboard experience across all the different journeys and put it all together to be able to create something that didn't exist, that would never been done before. To hopefully inspire the world and change what's possible.
Guy Kawasaki:
There's a lot of nerves when I listened to this. So I just going to give you a few topics just tell us how you did this on this trip. So: Food.
Chris Bertish:
Okay. Freeze-dried food, which was a challenge because the company that I was meant to get all the freeze-dried food which I had been mapping out and planning for six months before went bankrupt a week before I left. So that was not sponsored. We didn't get the right freeze-dried food that I had planned out. We only ended up getting three different packs for ninety-three days. So 180 different versions, but only three different packs. And the one pack was Nasi Goreng, and that gave me the run so I could never have that. So there were only actually two different packs. Ham and leek which was absolutely horrendous. I hate leeks.
I know. That was challenging because your body and your mind won't allow you to have the same thing even though you think that it's not a problem. But when you have it every single day, twice a day for 93 days, your body starts revolting. I'm not saying it's revolting because it is revolting to taste. Yes, it's revolting to taste, but your body actually will not accept it.
So you have to work out ways to mentally trick your mind and manipulate your mental space to be able to add in different things, change the color of the bag, put it in different things to be able to trick your mind so it actually would take it in-
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay: Water.
Chris Bertish:
Water. A little desalination unit, so I had a mini water de-salinator which is running off my little solar panels of the top of my craft, and that ran the most of my systems.
So it ran my AIS, it ran my sat Nav, it ran my little GPS machine, and it charged my battery so I could film GoPro’s and also link up with my SAT communication system so I could send my little captain's log out one a week to the world which was my inspiring message to the world, which was sometimes very difficult to be inspiring when you felt like you were in the process of trying to die.
Guy Kawasaki:
Watch.
Chris Bertish:
Watch. At that time, I had a Suunto... I think Fenix 5 which would monitor my stroke rate. So I worked out... Roughly what I was doing on a daily basis from a stroke rate and by the time I finished, I think it was on 2,475,672 strokes.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay: Cameras.
Chris Bertish:
I took five different GoPro’ s, and I had different mounts in different locations. So sometimes I put them down beneath of the craft, and when I was cleaning the body of the craft so I could film myself either cleaning the bottom of the craft or there would be a story to tell from the shark that ate me with the GoPro camera that would have filmed it. Because I believe that was my black box. So I think it's important for the story to be told no matter what so people would know what happened to me.
Guy Kawasaki:
Why do you have to clean the bottom of the boat in a ninety-day trip?
Chris Bertish:
Okay. So there's what's called goose barnacles that start taking over the bottom of your craft and-
Guy Kawasaki:
That quickly?
Chris Bertish:
Yeah. Within two weeks, you already start growing, and if you don't scrape them off that quickly, they'd start growing like a carpet, and they'll slow you down by almost half a night. And if you multiply half a night by twenty-four hours, that means that it becomes a lot. And if you multiply that by ninety-three days…so I didn't actually have enough food to be able to get me through. I only had enough food to get me through ninety-five days, and we had already had a massive leak in the craft where I thought I was going to sink halfway through the journey. I damaged about five days of food, so I was already short three days of food. So really in the last week, I was already on rations and I had already lost twenty percent of my entire body mass.
Well, amazing thing is I was using all the Apple products along the journey.
Guy Kawasaki:
Oh, you were?
Chris Bertish:
The eleven-inch Mac, and I was using two iPhones. One iPhone was a backup of the other iPhone for communication device which Bluetooth to my little satellite dish, and then every day, I was doing updates on the weather and the routing on my Mac. And I was charging it all through solar.
Guy Kawasaki:
Really?
Chris Bertish:
Yeah, I mean, it couldn't get more of a better story of using tools for-
Guy Kawasaki:
And it survived on it?
Chris Bertish:
... innovation to create impact. Yeah.
Guy Kawasaki:
You only took one Mac?
Chris Bertish:
I only took the eleven-inch. So eleven-inch Air was incredible. It survives everything. The funny thing that I found interesting was all the cables just got eaten. I took five cables, five phone charging cables, I was on the last one by the time I got there.
Speaker 4:
Wow.
Chris Bertish:
Because the salt just-
Jeremy:
Sea salt-
Chris Bertish:
... The salt just eats everything. It's fascinating, but the devices worked like a charm. So they doubled up as my music and my-- I took a whole lot of little audio programs that would get me through different parts of the journey.
Guy Kawasaki:
What does Chris Bertish listen to?
Chris Bertish:
Huh!
Guy Kawasaki:
Queen.
Chris Bertish:
Rock on. Yeah. A little bit of everything, actually. Yeah. Right from orchestral, to classic, to rock, to alternative, to country, to a little bit of everything.
Guy Kawasaki:
This sounds like a dumb question but can't you catch fish or something like that?
Chris Bertish:
Okay. You know what? It's not a dumb at all. I think that's a really clever question, and most people would just assume that you do.
Guy Kawasaki:
Sashimi every day.
Chris Bertish:
I did take fishing gear with me for that reason. But what I learnt was that my craft was so small that the only type of fish that I was going to catch out there, unfortunately, were really big dorado, and there were two problems with that. So a dorado is like dolphin fish or tuna. They became like my companions out there. I had a family of dorado that became, literally, like a wolf pack and they would swim with me every day. Four of them on my left and four of them on my right, and they would make eye contact with me, and then they almost inducted me like their alpha male of the wolf pack.
Guy Kawasaki:
So you didn't want to eat them?
Chris Bertish:
And I didn't want to eat them! So I fell in love with them. But that was…
Guy Kawasaki:
Did you have soy sauce just in case?!
Chris Bertish:
So the funny thing is that was one reason, but actually the more significant reason which I didn't realize at the time was that I got charged by multiple big great white sharks out there and because I was so small, my craft was so small, what I realized after the first time one breached underneath me and hit and almost knocked me off of my craft, I realized that when it happened a week later, when I got bumped and scrapped literally five days later in the middle of the night, it's the most terrifying thing when you're lying in this tiny little pod, when you're only separated by literally less than an inch a fiber grass, and you hear this, "Pah!" and scrapping you from the side.
It makes you realize how really insignificant you are in the middle of the ocean, and there's no way you can escape. It's their home. What I realized on the second time around was that I was obviously the right size and shape of a slow-moving whale calf that had maybe got separated from its mother. So I was a soft target, and that was a terrible realization to come to.
So every time I thought of wanting to fish, the type of fish that I would be catching would be really big and big dorados are really powerful fish. One, they were really my friends, and two, if I had to catch one and to try and get them up onto my deck and try and kill them with a massive knife, the likelihood of me stabbing myself or trying to rip the big hook out of its mouth and getting it infected and getting septicemia, all that kind of stuff, became…
Because my space on my deck was literally the size of this table. Not even a meter-long bar, not even a meter wide. So you try and wrestle a five-foot tuna on a deck that size, the likelihood that it's going to do damage to you-- and then there's going to be blood everywhere, and then you cut this beautiful fish up and you take three beautiful steaks and you eat it, and then you put it in the fridge, right?
Guy Kawasaki:
There's no fridge.
Chris Bertish:
Of course there's no fridge.
Guy Kawasaki:
Yeah.
Chris Bertish:
And then you got this massive, bleeding fish, this beautiful fish that's bleeding everywhere, attracting more of the creatures that have just tried to eat you, that are bigger and longer than your craft that you're fearing for your life that it's going to happen again and the outcome is not going to be very positive for you because the first two were pretty as close as it comes to being eaten and breached on by a twenty-five-foot great white.
It's a very humbling experience where you have a great white and you're not in a cage, you're not with a shark boat doing a shark tour, and you see the creature, and then you think to yourself, "Okay, well, just step up off my craft into the bigger boat which I'll be safe,” and then you realize that's not available, and you are thousands of miles from any other human being and any other help and that's when you realize how completely alone you really are.
Guy Kawasaki:
You're just protein.
Chris Bertish:
Yeah. Exactly. Snack. Yeah.
Guy Kawasaki:
You were paddling at night, resting during the day?
Chris Bertish:
No. I did sort of a regime which was four hours on, two hours off. But you never really-- so in that hour that you have off, or let's say two hours off that of the two hours, one hour goes to navigation and solving problems, dealing with challenges, checking your navigation, and the other hour goes to eating, prepping your next meal, prepping your next hydration pack, and then making water and everything else. So there was never a time where I slept for more than an hour and twenty-five minutes when things where good. And then-
Guy Kawasaki:
For ninety-three days?!
Chris Bertish:
Yeah. And then when things were really bad, I never slept for more than four and half to nine minutes because I was getting semi-inverted by waves.
Guy Kawasaki:
So taking this Mavericks story, this transatlantic story, not a lot of people are going to be surfing sixty-foot waves or doing this transatlantic stuff. So what's the lessons that they can look at you and say, “If he did it, I’ve got to up my game?” What's the lessons of your life that someone working at Apple or Google or...
Chris Bertish:
I think it's really just simple as dream bigger, think bigger. You can do anything you set your mind to achieve and if you put your mind to something, try and do something on a daily basis.
We only have one life, so live it. You've got to find what you're passionate about, and when you find out what you're passionate about, then work at it and give it everything you've got, and when you do that, then you become really great at it, and when you become really great at it and you're passionate about it, then you have a battery pack that doesn't run flat, so you put in more time and energy into it until you become extraordinary.
When you become extraordinary, then it's your duty to be able to give back and help others and I believe that we can all do and become far greater than we ever imagined. I think our only thing that's holding ourselves back is ourselves and our belief in ourselves, the way we can blueprint our life in whatever way we imagine it to be if we believe in it and we have the courage to be able to follow it, that we can achieve literally and limitless potential of whatever we set our mind to. You can literally blueprint your life and then guard and create it.
I believe that because I wrote the Captain's Log for finishing the transatlantic five days before I did it because we are in a hectic storm. I wasn't at the time delved into it. It was just like, I was trying to get there. I knew that if I missed the island, I was going to miss the entire Caribbean Island chain and end up in Venezuela. I didn't have visa, I didn't have enough food to get there. It was going to take another three weeks. I was probably going to die if I missed it so I had to get there. So I wrote the Captain's Log, formerly fishing on that day in Antigua.
It was exactly how it happened. Exactly down to every single detail that I wrote in the Captain's Log of that finishing day. Why? Because I had watched that movie thousands of times in my mind and what it was going to look like, what was it going to feel like, what it was going to taste like, what was it going to smell like.
I can see the people's faces, I could see the seagulls flying. I could watch that movie in 4k vivid HD like it already happened. Because in my mind, it had already happened. All I was doing was just pulling it into reality, and you can do that for everything.
That’s when people go, "Ha, Jeez. You've done surfing and you've done now this big thing." You don't have to just be good at one thing. You can be good at multiple different things. So whatever you set your mind to achieve. You can talk about a 10,000-hour rule, whatever, and it is.
You have to become so consumed and so passionate in what you wanting to achieve that it's real. And the mind doesn't know the difference between what you create in your own mental space to actually what is reality, and you can fool it into be able in creating reality before they exist and that's how every idea is bought into reality.
It's just having the courage to be able to follow that and then taking every single step and every single strategic choice you make that will help you get there. And then you use your RAD’s which, as you know, it's your articulate activating system which is like your mind's filter that helps you bring in everything that you need in other to be able to make that happen.
As soon as you understand how to use that, then you can manipulate that and supersize and amplify it tenfold. So everything you need to be able to get to achieving what you want to do will come into your life because you physically are bringing in your subconscious and your conscious mind until it becomes your reality and you're living it before it even happens, and then all you're doing is you're bring it into reality, and I think that's what you do and-
Guy Kawasaki:
So in short, it's all mental.
Chris Bertish:
Ninety percent of it is mental.
Guy Kawasaki:
What's the other ten?
Chris Bertish:
Passion, grit, courage, purpose. What I've realized from the journey that I've just done is when you're driven by passion empowered by a purpose greater than yourself, then it will help you overcome any obstacle and challenge and helping you even achieve the seemingly impossible.
And we all have our own storms to face in life. We all have our own challenges to face. It's just if you take the early steps in motion you believe in yourself and you never ever give up, you can literally achieve anything.
Guy Kawasaki:
Fantastic.
Chris Bertish:
You're realizing the impossible.
Guy Kawasaki:
Fantastic.

I hope this episode empowers you to go out and push through your fears. One of my fears is the six-foot wave, and I promised Bertish I'd push through that.

My thanks to Jeff C. and Peg Fitzpatrick who helped me push through my fear of podcasting. Mahalo also to Neil "Mikimoto" Pearlberg for introducing me to Chris.

Here's one more story from the Atlantic crossing. Wrap your mind around being pulled through waves by a gigantic squid.
Chris Bertish:
I know waves I could swim in all my life, and the way that I was getting pulled, like a jerking whale. I was getting pulled through the top. It was in the middle of the worst storm that I had on the entire journey. So I was getting pulled right through the top of five-meter waves in forty to forty-five knots of wind which is one down from a full-blown category one hurricane. I was getting pulled against the conditions at one-point-five knots through the conditions.
Guy Kawasaki:
Did you-
Chris Bertish:
That shouldn't be possible.
Guy Kawasaki:
So how do you-
Chris Bertish:
I had a parachute anchor, and I was in my little cabin. I could see myself, just this sheet of water going over the cabin as I was getting dragged through the top of these waves, and I was like, "That shouldn't be possible. I should be going with the conditions." And when I figured it out, I managed to get my satellite phone on and I managed to send through the thing.
I've sent a message to my routing and forecasting guy in Scotland who's done a couple of transits, and I was, like, "This is what's happening. I'm in the middle of the fucking massive storm. I'm just trying to survive. The conditions got even worse, but this is what's happening. I'm going forward into the conditions. That shouldn't be possible. I've narrowed down to only two different things that can possibly be, but it's so farfetched that I need someone to actually confirm what I'm thinking because I think I'm going fucking nuts."
And about four and half minutes later, I got the most terrifying digital message back on any device that I've ever received, which is he said, "Chris, you're either caught on a giant whale or a giant squid that's caught in your parachute anchor that's going to drag you under. I suggest you take immediate evasive action, otherwise it's going to drag you and the craft down with it.
So I managed to time it so the next wave I got into all my safety gear and everything move forward again. So I've got my deck knife out and I turned to get out and as I got out, I managed to put my leash on, my big wave leash which was attached to the other part of the craft and to my own harness, and as I cut the line, I was-- because everything was happening so fast, I didn't have time to think through, because there was no manual that said you're going to get pulled under the waves by a giant squid.
So I managed to cut the line. As I cut the line, the other back half of the line which goes to the other half of the parachute anchor, it goes around to the stern of the craft. So the load of the line getting cut spun the craft around and flipped it upside down and then I was obviously attached through my leash and my safety line so then I got thrown overboard. Then I got taken underneath the craft.
When it's spun around, all that lines went around. Then I got caught underneath the craft in the water. At two in the morning, in forty to fifty knots of wind, in five to seven-meter seas, the most terrifying conditions you can imagine. I'm stuck, getting dragged underneath the water. The one line went around my center board, wrapped around me underneath the water. So now I'm trapped underneath the water in the middle of the storm in the middle of the night.
Somehow, I still had my knife in my hand sand I remember trying to cut the line in between myself. And as I cut the line, I just heard just, like, “zzz,” the line is cutting through my finger which cut through almost right down to the bone to free myself. Just my one safety snapped and my big wave leash engaged, and I pulled myself back up. I remember looking down, I actually thought my finger had been ripped off. And thank goodness, so I hadn't actually taken my gloves off. I had wrapped every single one of my fingers like a boxer with that oxide tape to stop the blisters, and if it wasn't for that, I would have probably either lost my finger or would have gone right down to the bone on both sides but I hadn't taken my gloves off. In three and a half weeks, I hadn't taken them off once, and that's probably what saved me.
If I hadn't unlocked my hatch out, it would have been game over. And it's the vigilance. It's a vigilance and the routine to ensure you never ever let your guard down and that kind of thing. At any particular point, if I had left my hatch open and I got caught by a wave sideways, game over.
When you get fatigued and when you get tired, that's the first thing you do. You get careless with little things. If you get careless, you're done. I realized that if I got desperate... That's why I had a backup of a backup of a backup.
Even my harness that I had was a climbing harness that I had teared it that was gone from the deck of the craft to my harness, which had a breaking strain of five tons, and then I had another line that went from my steering system which went up to my harness. So when I fell overboard, it would pull the steering system right so the craft would turn up into the wind, and then if those two snapped, then my big wave leash would engage, and that's something that I had been using all my life which had never let me down.
Two of those things that snapped once through the storm and my other one engaged. I realized that if anytime the wind was above twelve knots, which was ninety percent of the time, if I got separated from my craft at any particular time, the chance of me being able to swim back to be able to get to it was zero. Not five percent, not ten percent-- separate from the craft, and you're dead. Game over. No percentage ratio can help you. You're done. And that's pretty scary if you figure out. You get it wrong, you die.
Guy Kawasaki:
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