By Lynn Rosellini , August 2007

Two young women set off to row across the Atlantic. They had no idea what they were in for

"Pick up. Please!" Bill Butler punched in the 15-digit satellite phone number again.
No answer.
The two young women rowers he'd mentored were in the middle of the Atlantic battling three-metre seas in cloud cover so dense they'd lost all sense of direction. Now they'd apparently lost phone contact, too. Butler knew what that meant. They were dead or adrift.

The old corrugated tin boathouse of the Purdue University Crew, with racing shells stacked in rows, echoed with the voices of young women. "There's this awesome race across the Atlantic," Sarah Kessans told team mates one October morning in 2003.

The Woodvale Events Atlantic Rowing Race covered a 4726-kilometre course from the Canary Islands to Antigua. Two-person teams competed in specially designed rowboats. The women's record was 50 days.

Across the boathouse, Emily Kohl listened intently. She and Kessans were a lot alike, muscular, competitive with ambitions as big as the boathouse. When they'd first met, they couldn't stand each other. Emily, a varsity member, thought Sarah was a loudmouth braggart. Sarah, the novice, considered her older team mate an icy snob. In an effort to boost competition, and perhaps end the hostilities, their coach put them together face to face on rowing machines. Working across from one another, grinding out 2K (2000-metre) shifts, they might learn to cooperate. Now, the more Sarah talked, the more Emily was intrigued. There weren't many opportunities for women rowers after university. This was the ultimate challenge, one that would stretch body and will to the limit.

There was one problem: their rowing had been in sculls on Wabash River in Indiana, US. They'd never rowed competitively at sea and would need someone who understood the ocean.

The boat
On a hot summer day in 2005, Sarah and Emily escorted Bill Butler down a dock in Florida, to see their new pride and joy: a slender white rowboat they had christened American Fire.

Butler was a legend at Purdue, where he'd co-founded the crew team in 1949. He was long, lean and fit at 75, and had a scruffy white beard.

He'd had an extraordinary deep-water sailing career, crossing the Atlantic five times and living through three shipwrecks. Once, while he was fulfilling a lifelong dream to circumnavigate the globe, whales rammed his boat and crushed the hull. He and his wife survived an incredible 66 days in the open Pacific, catching triggerfish, fighting off sharks and riding out lightning storms in a leaky life raft.

American Fire was about 2m wide, over 7m long, with two rear-facing rowing stations and a tiny 2x1m enclosed cabin. It was constructed of fibreglass-reinforced marine plywood and equipped with an array of technical devices. Solar panels fed batteries for onboard lighting and other equipment.

The rowboat could carry 75 days of food (mostly freeze-dried), a water desalinator, a propane stove, three GPS units and a VHF radio. Their toilet was a bucket.

Now, Sarah and Emily watched as Butler looked the boat over with a critical eye. Butler thought American Fire was too round-bottomed for rough seas, its keel too shallow to prevent roll-overs. But the race organiser had approved the vessel, and two escort yachts accompanying the racers would provide an additional measure of safety. Though he was sceptical about the boat, Butler felt immediate affection for the two young women, the ages of his granddaughters. He liked their daring and enthusiasm; it reminded him of himself at that age.
"OK, girls, I'll help you," he told them. His unspoken objective was to ensure that they came back alive.

The coach
For the next three months, Butler relentlessly drilled them on safety issues as they trained along the Florida coast. He taught them how to secure a sea anchor and tie on a lifeboat so that it wouldn't break loose, and he made sure they could read a barometer.

Guard the Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) with your life, he told them. If they cap- sized or were in danger, that instrument would signal their boat's position to the Coast Guard. And Butler warned them to keep a 30-metre lifeline off the stern in case one of them washed overboard. It amused Sarah and Emily to see him fuss over them.

The challenge
On November 30, 2005, Sarah and Emily rowed out of La Gomera harbour in the Canary Islands with 25 other competing boats. Seas were calm and the two young women found the open ocean magical. By day, they marvelled at loggerhead turtles, flying fish and pilot whales. At night, their oars stirred phosphorescent plankton, making the water glow.

To pass the time, they listened to the 4000 songs on their iPods and The Da Vinci Code along with more books on tape. Soon, though, they settled into a dull, rigorous routine, rowing round the clock in two-hour shifts – one sleeping or eating while the other worked the oars. It was hard, backbreaking work, and sometimes they got on each other's nerves. At times tempers flared. But they had an unspoken pact: no whining. Ever.

Every day at noon Greenwich Mean Time, Bill Butler connected with the girls by satellite phone. Surrounded by nautical charts, he gave them the weather forecast, plotted their course for the day and answered questions: should they swim under the boat and scrape off barnacles? Don't, he warned. They did anyway. Do they always have to wear cumbersome safety harnesses? You do. They didn't – until the day Sarah was washed out of the boat in rough seas and just managed to grab an oar and hook her toes over the gunwale. It was hardly gratifying to him that Emily confessed "We should've listened to Bill."

For Christmas, Emily had stowed a red Santa hat, and that day the two feasted on freeze-dried blueberry cheesecake. By New Year's Day, they'd logged 1 648km, averaging 51km a day. But then the weather turned. Howling 25-knot winds, intermittent rainstorms and 3m waves battered the little vessel. And didn't let up.

She was trapped
On the night of January 14, the waves were so high, it became impossible to row. They capped the cabin's air vents to keep water out and tried to sleep. A few hours later, they awoke gasping for air, choking on their own exhaled CO2, and had to open the vents again.

Rough seas continued all the next day. The boat rolled, tumbling them around the small cabin. Then, at about 4.30pm, a wave 6m high struck the port side, slamming both of them against the wall and turning the rowboat upside down. Water poured in. "Cover the vents!" Emily screamed. She grabbed a pair of shorts and stuffed them in the holes. "We can still self-right!" Out of the window, she saw the life raft float away. The EPIRB Bill told them to guard with their lives was loose, bobbing in the flooded cabin. Sarah grabbed it. Water was at chest level, and they couldn't stem the flow – now the boat was too heavy to right. Sarah pulled the switch on the EPIRB; she grabbed the VHF radio, opened the hatch and wriggled out.

Emily tried to swim after her, but her ankle caught in the 45-metre emergency throw line. She was trapped. Water rose over her head. She heard the muted sound of Sarah's voice calling, "Emily! Where are you?" She bent down and struggled to free her ankle. The rope held fast.

Emily found an air pocket in the foot well. Taking a final breath, she submerged, wrestled with the rope again and finally slipped her foot free. She swam out of the hatch and clambered up next to Sarah on the barnacle-covered hull that was pitching in a cold, turbulent sea.

Staying alive
The US Coast Guard station at Virginia picked up an EPIRB signal at 6.06pm, fixed its position and sent out a distress call to all ships in the area. American Fire was over 2000km east of Puerto Rico, too far for a helicopter. A C-130 was dispatched from Air Station Clearwater in Florida. It would have to refuel in Antigua and take at least 13 hours to reach them – if they could hang on that long. The escort yachts that Butler and the girls had counted on were miles from them, busy rescuing other rowers in trouble.

The two women assessed their situation. They couldn't hold on for long barehanded. They'd freeze without some protection. Sarah decided to return to the cabin to retrieve life jackets and a safety harness. It was risky. She could become entangled in the ropes and flotsam.

Sarah dived and felt her way around, managing at last to grab the jackets, the harness and one of the sleeping bags – even wet it would offer some insulation from the cold.

The two clipped themselves together with the harness and waited, hoping that someone, somewhere, had heard their signal for help. After a couple of hours kneeling on the pitching hull, their legs were racked with cramps. Still, they had not broken their pact. Neither would whine. And neither would let the other see that she was afraid.

In San Juan, Bill Butler was at his computer when he heard the news and began his series of fruitless calls. His stomach was tight. He pictured a capsized boat, the girls washed away. Even if they managed to stay with the boat, in seas of 21°C, hypothermia could knock you unconscious in 3 hours and kill you. He stood on the balcony of his flat and looked out towards the Atlantic. They're just babies, he thought.

Emily watched something red float by. "Well," she said. "We lost our life raft, but we still have our Santa hat!" To keep their spirits up, they belted out a rock tune: "I'm at an all-time low," they hollered into the wind, "slightly bruised and broken . . ." Then the VHF radio that Sarah had retrieved stopped working, and as the hours went on, their bravado began to break.

Three times during the night, giant waves washed Sarah off the hull. Each time, Emily pulled her back on. Shivering under the saturated sleeping bag, Sarah became overwhelmed with sadness: we're out here all alone, just a speck in the ocean. Mum and Dad won't know what has happened to me.

On the other side of the boat, Emily was grimly silent. She had a death grip on the boat's throw line, but facing into the waves, her mouth filled with salt water with each surge, forcing her to swallow and choke.

Then, at dawn, she thought she saw a glimmer on the horizon. "It's a rescue boat!" she shouted. "They're coming to get us! Awesome!" But a few minutes later, the light was gone.

About 7am, the women saw another glimmer, this one in the sky. As they watched, it grew bigger. They turned on their life jacket strobe lights and held the EPIRB high. It was the Coast Guard C-130 that had been flying a search pattern of intersecting tri- angles, scanning the black water with a night-vision scope. The plane dropped an orange flare, but no raft. What good was a flare? The plane crossed over them and flew off.

Was she hallucinating? Emily saw two tall, swaying masts rock up over the horizon. "Kessans," she said. "What kind of ship is that?" Sarah blinked through salt-crusted eyes. "It looks just like a pirate ship."

Safe at last
The Stavros S Niarchos, a square-rigged British training ship, had been about 190km to the northwest of American Fire when the captain received the distress call. He brought the 60m long brig about amid the 30-knot winds and violent waves to make a sector search of the area guided by the Coast Guard plane.

The crew of the Stavros dropped a small life raft, and Sarah and Emily struggled aboard. Weak, exhausted after nearly 17 hours in cold seas, their last challenge was climbing the rope ladder of the heavily rolling ship.

They stripped and were wrapped in warm dry blankets. The first-aid officer checked them over. Their leg muscles had atrophied from weeks in the rowboat. They were given tea and porridge; rest for bone-cold and battered bodies was what they needed most. What they wanted most was a hot shower. It would be their first in 47 days. The next day, they e-mailed Butler. "Hey, Bill, we are now safely aboard the Stavros . . ."

Four months later, American Fire was found by fishermen; it was floating near the French West Indies. Emily and Sarah made plans to bring the boat to Florida for repairs – and to train for the 2007 Woodvale race. "We can't start something that we can't finish," Emily says. They want to team with Butler again.

"The girls don't realise how close they came to death," Butler says. Yet he'd be the last person to squelch a dream. "I'd probably do the same thing they're doing. I'd say, 'What the heck. Let's prove we can row the Atlantic'."