Ultimate Quest

The Ultimate Quest

“To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield. To follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought.”
Alfred Lord Tennyson: Ulysses.

Bruce Stannard salutes Tom Robinson’s spirit of adventure as the Brisbane boatbuilder prepares to become the youngest oarsman ever to row solo across the Pacific, east to west.

Twenty-two-year-old boatbuilder Tom Robinson has embark upon the ultimate quest for self-knowledge, the ultimate test of human endurance or, as some sceptics might have it, the ultimate folly in so boldly risking his young life on a nine-month trans-Pacific passage in which he plans to row alone 8,000 nautical miles across the Pacific from Lima in Peru to his home on the Brisbane River. I only wish that I possessed sufficient pluck to join him.
In his own quiet way, Tom is about to give us all a glimpse of what sometimes seems like a lost world, the world of adventure for its own sake, in which men and women of courage once undertook truly extraordinary endeavours: climbing mountains, crossing deserts and ice caps and oceans, risking everything for a glimpse of the sublime within themselves and in the world around them. Focused, as people mostly are these days on the incessant ringing of the wretched cell-phones in their palms, they often find it hard to conceive of anything beyond their own immediate existence. Tom Robinson’s ambitious solo voyage will, one hopes, inspire us to see that there is a good deal more to life than a never-ending news-feed. He is inviting us to refocus our gaze. The vast Pacific, by far the greatest geographical feature on our planet, remains a realm of infinite beauty, of mystery and of terror. Far from being daunted, Tom is very keen indeed to make the most of this, the greatest challenge of his young life.
Tom has been preparing for his epic voyage since he was a 14-year-old boy knocking about in a home-made plywood flattie on the upper reaches of the Brisbane River. Constantly striving to perfect his oarsmanship became a kind of journey toward enlightenment, one that led inexorably to the endorphin-releasing delights of long-distance ocean rowing and the damascene moment when he realised that this is what he wanted to do with his life. No one as young as he, has ever rowed alone across the Pacific Ocean from east to west alone. It sounded crazy, but if you’re in your 20s, ‘Hey, why not give it a go?’
     In July, 2021, 150 people turned up at the Carrington Boating Club to watch the launch of the lovely 7.32m (24ft) double-ended plywood clinker skiff that Tom named Maiwar, the indigenous term for the Brisbane River. Tom designed and built the boat himself based on inspirational plans he found in American Willits Ansel’s authoritative book The Whaleboat: A Study of Design, Construction and Use. Maiwar is 1.9m on the beam, draws just a few centimetres and displaces around 250kg. Fully-loaded she weighs around 900 kg. Tom adapted the bow design to incorporate a weatherproof cuddy sheltering a small gas stove for cooking and a two metre bunk with sitting head-room. There is a similar watertight compartment right aft for the stowage of freeze-dried food, 350 litres of water in bladders and other gear. He will use ultra-lightweight but immensely strong 3.2 metre carbon-fibre oars as well as traditional Spruce oars and row from a sliding seat mounted within the midships self-draining cockpit. Maiwar looks to be a perfect little sea-boat to my eye. That’s an assessment very much shared by all Tom’s friends and family and especially the professionals in the boating industry. “Inevitably,” he said, “there were a few nay-sayers on Facebook, but no one I would take any notice of. All those who know me have confidence in my abilities.”
     Tom Robinson has been mucking about in boats since he was four. His father had a 22ft fibreglass Space Sailer and the two of them sailed around Moreton Bay together. Tom remembers having “no interest in boats at all and hating every minute of it.” What he really wanted to do was row. His father made him a little plywood flattie and like the loveable Ratty in The Wind in the Willows, he spent every afternoon after school rowing up and down the Brisbane River for the sheer joy of it. When he was 14 he spent five days rowing an old modified OK Dinghy 130kms from Brisbane to the Gold Coast. “That was the first little journey for me,” he said. “That’s where it all started.”
    From the outset, he said, his parents were “nervous but supportive. They have always encouraged me; never tried to dissuade me. I was always a strong-willed, determined young fellow. The following year I rowed up to Caloundra then back to Brisbane. That 200km took me eight days.When I was 17 I rowed a John Gardner designed Chamberlain Dory from Tin Can Bay up the coast to Bundaberg. That was a very exciting 10 days.”
     By that time Tom knew he wanted to pursue a career as a professional boatbuilder. During the school holidays he haunted local boatyards, volunteering to help with repair and maintenance work on old wooden boats. That was, he says, “a hell of a lot of fun” which was also gradually improving his knowledge and skills. He counts himself extremely fortunate to have served his five year apprenticeship restoring historic wooden vessels with the highly regarded Simon Paroz & Co Boatbuilders at the old Tripcony Slipway at Breakfast Creek. He carved a traditional Boatbuilder’s half hull-model of his boat and drew up a set of lines and offsets. Last year, during the final stages of his apprenticeship, Tom started to plan his marathon trans-Pacific voyage in detail. He investigated the 8,000 mile route, looked closely at prevailing winds and currents and planned the shipping of his boat to historic Valparaiso, one of the northernmost port cities on Chile’s exceptionally long and narrow Pacific coast. However, when Valparaiso proved not to be viable, he booked a passage to Lima, Peru, where he was unfortunately robbed at knife-point and where Peruvian Customs hit him hard with huge and totally unexpected bill of charges. Those two ghastly experiences might have soured the whole idea and yet at the same time, Tom received overwhelming support from scores of ordinary Peruvians who rallied around the adventurous young Australian. Tom is now well into his first leg, rowing toward Tahiti. From there he will eventually head home to Brisbane via the Cook Islands and Tonga. “I will be in absolutely no hurry,” Tom said. “I hope to spend time in the islands, learning about the Pacific peoples and their cultures. The writer and ocean explorer, David Lewis is my great hero. I have his book, We the Navigators and I’m very much looking forward to following the star tracks just as he did when he sailed aboard the traditional Polynesian canoes.”
    With that in mind, I sent Tom a Polynesian prayer, chanted on the eve of long sea voyages in which a flax garland was traditionally thrown into the water as an offering to the sea god, Tangaroa.

“May the calm be widespread
May the ocean glisten as greenstone,
May the shimmer of light ever dance across your pathway.”

Amen to that, Tom. Safe journey.

Footnote: Tom estimates his trans-Pacific voyage will cost around $60,000. He would welcome sponsorship enquiries. For further information visit www.tomrobinsonboats.com

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