Bear Grylls (42 page)

The navy would also help with the berthing of the RIB at the RN Sailing Centre at Portsmouth, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Bill Rothwell. In addition, the navy offered to supply us
with 20 tonnes of fuel for the sea-trialling. It was more than I had ever hoped for.

In the end the navy’s commitment to us far outweighed even this, and their proactive support was crucial, especially in linking us up with the Danish and Canadian navies, who we knew were
the only people who operated the rescue ships up in the Arctic. It was slowly becoming apparent that the naval side of the expedition was fundamental to our chances of success. (That is, of course,
if you can manage to restrain the navy boys from taking you out drinking, which bitter experience has taught me is always a bad idea.)

The head of Fleet Corporate Communications, Captain Alistair Halliday, placed an advertisement in the
Navy News
. ‘One naval engineer volunteer needed for arduous northerly
expedition. Well paid, extra leave, but cold and misery guaranteed, with no ward room to escape the wind and waves!’

We received three replies and prepared to run some form of selection process. The first candidate was Lieutenant Andy Leivers, who came to visit me on our barge in London. He seemed to enjoy the
environment, telling Shara she had a lovely galley and referring to our loo as the ‘heads’. He was very polite, and very naval.

It was a sunny day, so I suggested Andy and I should take the little RIB that we keep on the Thames out for a spin. I quite often take people down the river and they invariably flounder aboard
rather uncomfortably and take some time to settle. Andy was different. He was obviously completely at ease on the water and I remember how precisely and professionally he tidied away the rope,
tying a perfect bowline round the stanchion with one hand.

While we were preparing to climb on to the RIB, Shara had been inside the barge, on the phone to her mum. She had heard us clambering around on deck and quickly jumped to conclusions.

‘I don’t believe it, Mum,’ she gasped. ‘Bear said he would put these guys through this selection process, and I think he really means it. I can hear them on deck and
he’s making the Lieutenant do press-ups. Poor guy’s dressed in his best trousers!’

Luckily for Andy that wasn’t the case. I wasn’t that harsh (although I subsequently found out he would have loved to have done some press-ups) and in any case I was quickly becoming
convinced that Andy Leivers was exactly the kind of person we needed. He had joined the Royal Navy as a marine apprentice at the age of seventeen, risen through the ranks to become an officer, then
read engineering at Southampton University. He was now serving as Deputy Marine Engineer on HMS
Newcastle
. He was eminently qualified, and he seemed fun, diligent and cautious.

I didn’t even see the other two candidates.

Andy recalls:

I knew Andy was the right guy. So we worked out a deal with Captain Halliday, whereby Andy would essentially be seconded to us from the Royal Navy.

I sought two assurances from the navy: the first was that they would allow Andy to be 100 per cent committed to our expedition and would not call him away for other duties or operations. I felt
it was essential for Andy to understand that if the men he had been in charge of were sent to Iraq, or elsewhere, his commitment was still to be to this expedition. I understood how hard this might
be for him if war broke out. They were his men, whom he’d looked after. But he knew what I was after and agreed. As it transpired, his men were used in coping with the fire service strikes at
home, and not in the Gulf, so Andy really only missed an alternative way of getting soaked.

The second assurance I needed from the navy was that they would support me as leader of this expedition and I would have the authority of the navy behind me if I needed it. I felt it was
important to lay this down early and for Andy to know he was on secondment and that I was in charge.

Both these conditions were agreed.

I was immensely relieved to have pulled this off. It was a huge deal for us. I felt tremendously privileged to have secured the services of a first-rate engineer from the finest navy in the
world.

Through the weeks
that followed, I became increasingly impressed by Andy’s professionalism. He took total responsibility for the engine and fuel systems, and
regularly brought me charts indicating how we could maximize the boat’s performance. Cautious by nature and conservative in his analysis, he seemed to provide the ideal counterbalance to me.
But on top of this, I reckoned that he was the kind of person who would help me make the right decisions under pressure in the middle of the ocean.

Mick had really pushed me to involve the Royal Navy somehow. He felt that it provided important security. He said that if the navy were just ‘sponsors’ and it all went wrong, they
might be less inclined to send out the search-and-rescue than if we had one of their personnel on board. I agreed; but it was more than that. We now had an engineer who had been trained to the
highest level, a man who also had a real understandingof the sea, weather and fuel management. And I knew that the more knowledge we had on this little boat, the better.

Finally, Andy came across as a kind man. I didn’t want somebody who was just super-strong and super-confident in whatever they did. It was as important to me that I found someone who would
work through a tough night and then be kind enough to offer you the roll-mat at the end. And Andy was exactly that sort of person.

So this was
the crew: Mick, Nige, Charlie and Andy. I was convinced of their individual qualities, and hopeful we would bond together well. But there is always an
element of the unknown and probably the most intense few months of our lives lay ahead.

But that bonding did come. And I remember when it happened.

It was one evening, not long before we left for Canada, when the whole team were together, meticulously going through each stage of the route point by point. At the start, this type of meeting
had been dominated by me, talking them through all the plans, but this time it was different. They were all talking, buried in maps, fuel-ratio diagrams, wave-chart data, Danish naval emergency
procedures, call signs, you name it. They talked about stuff I didn’t even understand. It was fantastic. I just sat quietly and watched. I could sense in their voices the anticipation of what
lay ahead. This was their expedition as much as it was mine. We were all in this together now.

This was what I had always wanted. I smiled to myself and opened a bottle of wine.

‘To the times ahead,’ I said, raising a glass.

‘To the times ahead,’ they replied, hardly even looking up as they continued poring over the charts.

This was my team. I knew I’d got lucky.

Fall down seven times. Get up eight.

Japanese proverb

One glance at
the long list of sponsors provided at the end of this book might create the impression that this was one of the most effortlessly funded expeditions in the
history of exploration.

It wasn’t.

In truth, the expedition was originally scheduled for the summer of 2002 but had to be postponed because we hadn’t raised enough money. In fact, after two years we had still raised no
money. Nothing at all.

I think people often assume that the world of expeditions is glamorous and romantic, but the reality is very different. Most of the actual expeditions themselves involve being continually cold,
wet and frightened. And any notions of ‘romance’ tend to dissipate pretty quickly when the temperature drops below freezing and stays there. Whereas in the movies it is all OK again two
hours later, the bottom line for us is that two hours later you are still there – no change, still cold, still wet and still frightened.

The other reality of an expedition is that 90 per cent of your time is spent in the preparation. And for us that preparation time was two years of uncertainty and self-doubt. As rejection
letters poured in as quickly as the proposals were dispatched, I questioned myself constantly: ‘Why is this not working?’

I struggled every day to find an answer.

When you put all your being into something afresh each morning, and it continually gets thrown back in your face, it’s hard. But life is rarely easy. And the bottom line is that we
eventually reached our target only because we were bloody-minded enough to keep going.

So many times people advised me to accept reality and try something else, and there were definitely moments when I thought they might be right. Day after day, the arrival of an envelope with a
company logo would provoke a surge of excitement, but this was invariably followed by deep frustration when I read the politely worded but negative response. Month after month, it was the same. But
somehow I found it even harder to give up; instead, I just became difficult to live with.

Nige and I dispatched literally hundreds of proposals in the course of two years, all neatly printed and bound. We raised absolutely nothing, although there were a few moments when we glimpsed
success.

Our initial strategy was to seek one overall title sponsor who would take all the commercial benefits on offer in return for the sum of £250,000. This, we hoped, would be the knockout
punch: the one big deal that would fund the expedition and end our worries.

For many months, these hugely optimistic right hooks kept missing the target. Then, just as hope was fading, British Telecom appeared to be moving within range. They seemed genuinely interested
and we were invited to make a presentation at their offices in Ipswich. Mick and Nige took an afternoon off work and we drove up there together. We soon found ourselves standing in BT’s huge
boardroom and we gave it our all. But it soon became clear they couldn’t write that size of cheque. It was just too much. So the bargaining began.

After some time they asked: ‘Do you think you could do it for £90,000?’

‘Well, yes . . . just,’ I replied.

After so many rejections, I would have accepted anything. All I wanted was to do the expedition, and there in the BT boardroom we started to calculate how we could do it for £90,000, how
much we could save if we bought a secondhand boat, cut back on this piece of kit and scrimped on communications. Deep down I knew it was madness.

Thankfully, in the end, BT said no, and our bank balance remained at zero. If they had, and we had gone ahead with a cut-price expedition, we would have seriously compromised our safety. It
would have been sacrificing a safety margin that we already didn’t have.

The explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes once said, ‘Staying the course is what counts – them that stick it out is them that win.’ I had read this in a magazine, saved the cutting and
tucked it just inside the frame of the mirror in our bedroom. I read it all the time. But, mentally, we were in the trenches. Sponsorship is always a process of attrition but I felt I was losing.
It was clear that we needed a fresh approach.

Robert Swan is another man I really admire. He has led expeditions to both the North and South Poles, and had become a friend. We had bought our barge from him in London, and his old boat was
now our home. Rob is a good man and one I respect. He just quietly gets on with things, and does them well. I like that. Around this time, I bumped into him at a lecture at the Royal Geographical
Society one balmy summer evening. We cut away from the crowds who were milling around drinking afterwards, and sat on the steps in the garden. I needed his advice and some help. I soon knew that
what he was telling me was like gold dust.

He said that rather than seek one overall sponsor, we should just create smaller, simpler packages and look for a larger number of sponsors. It seemed too obvious. ‘Make it
manageable,’ he continued. ‘You have a whole host of companies whose conferences you’ve spoken at, who like what you do. They’ll buy into this dream if it’s less money
and justifiable.’ I listened carefully. ‘Offer them a free talk and a day out on the boat afterwards and for £15,000, rather than £250,000, they have the branding and a
simple way for their staff to feel part of the adventure.’

He was absolutely right.

For a company to write a cheque for £250,000, not only do they need the approval of the board, but the timing has to be perfect and the proposal must match all their corporate values, etc.
That’s not always easy. It is much simpler for them to write out a cheque for £15,000 if it gives them a way of keeping involved with what you are doing and benefits the staff
internally as much as the exposure does externally. ‘All you have to do,’ Rob concluded, ‘is find twelve companies who will take this kind of package.’

So I did as he advised, to the letter. We created these new £15,000 packages and sent them to everyone again. But somehow the rejections still poured in.

I couldn’t understand why.

I sent out more.

Then one day in September 2002, we suffered particularly heavy losses. Four rejections arrived in the same post, all from key companies I had targeted. ‘I can’t believe they’ve
said “no”,’ I muttered to myself out of frustration. ‘Those were my best hopes.’ I was confused. I held my head in my hands. Nima, our dog, came over and sat on my
feet as she often did. Then I heard a voice from outside the door. ‘Bear, are you OK?’

It was one of our neighbours on the quay, Heidi-Jane Smith.