Pushing the Limits

Chapter One: Kurt by Sea

Who would have guessed vomit would be so hellishly slippery?

I mean, I have crawled through and across almost everything you could imagine, but I had no idea that vomit on the carbon-fibre deck of a racing yacht is about as slick as it gets. It's like that game where kids squirt detergent on a plastic strip, turn on the garden hose and take a flying leap. You don't have a hell of a lot of control over where you will end up.

When I was contemplating the hazards of taking part in the 2011 Sydney to Hobart yacht race, skidding wildly on other people's puke never made the list. I knew that powering through 628 nautical miles of ocean would present certain challenges, but anticipated they would relate more to my sailing inexperience. Or that not being able to walk might create a complication for the crew. Perhaps there would be the odd snag caused by being only 140 centimetres tall. But seasickness? The only concern I had there was the possibility of being struck down by it, not stuck down in it.

I suppose some people might wonder what the hell I was actually doing on board a 30-metre supermaxi yacht in the first place – a wheelchair racer from a small town in central New South Wales, whose watercraft knowledge did not extend much beyond meandering down the sedate Belubula River on a rubber tyre tube as a kid. But those people must not understand what motivates me. Must not understand that I feel like you only start living when life is pushing you out of your comfort zone.

Six months earlier, sailing down the east coast of Australia on the day after Christmas, competing in one of the world's great yacht races, was about as remote a possibility for me as pulling on a baggy green cap in the Boxing Day Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

The genesis of my involvement in the 67th Sydney to Hobart was a lunch meeting at an inner-city Sydney restaurant. A group of us were there to discuss ways to support the Humpty Dumpty Foundation, a charity that assists sick children and raises money to buy vital medical equipment.

I was chatting to good friend and fellow Humpty supporter Phil Kearns, the former Australian Wallabies rugby captain. Three years earlier, Kearnsy had rung up wanting to have a cup of coffee and to discuss ways to involve wheelchair racers in his pet project, the annual Balmoral Burn charity run. The Burn is a 420-metre dash up one of Sydney's sheerest hills from Balmoral Beach to Mosman, which has raised millions of dollars since its inception in 2000. At its steepest, the hill's gradient is nearly 30 per cent and over its length it rises about 70 metres. A wheelchair racer might take 45–50 seconds to push 400 metres on the track, but grinding up that Awaba Street climb would be another matter altogether, and Kearnsy wanted to know whether I thought wheelies could manage it. I was uncertain, but suggested the best way to find out was to have a lash. So I rounded up a crew of wheelchair racers and we assembled on the starting line. We had to zigzag all the way up and it took about six gruelling minutes, but we established that wheelchairs belonged in the Burn. In every year since we had gathered a group to take it on, making sure there were a few young racers competing. It acted as a kind of baptism of fire for them. You got to see if they had that bit of mongrel in them. The Burn would reveal whether they had the fire smouldering inside; would reveal how much ticker they had. Six minutes might not sound like much, but by the end of it your arms are in agony and your lungs are screaming out for respite. People have this idea that struggling is a bad thing, but struggling is brilliant. If you see someone struggle and overcome it, it is infectious. It makes you feel good to be alive.

Maybe the concept of struggling against expectations was lurking below the surface as I sat down to lunch with Kearnsy and those other Humpty supporters that day in 2011. He mentioned having sailed on board the yacht Investec Loyal in the previous year's Sydney to Hobart race, helping to raise $700 000 for the charity. Furthermore, sitting a few seats down the table was the yacht's skipper, Anthony Bell, the chief executive of an accounting and business advisory firm.

We were introduced and Bell began discussing his passion for sailing, sparked at the age of 14 by the discovery of catamarans and windsurfers. That passion took a back seat to playing rugby with Randwick for a while, but he returned to sailing in his twenties and became consumed with it after completing his first ocean race in 2009. He spoke about his yacht's prospects for the upcoming race.

'She's flying and I really think we're a chance for line honours this year,' he said. 'We should get you on board, Kurt, what do you reckon?'

'Mate, about the closest I've been to one of those big boats is sitting in the tray of a ute,' I laughed, 'but I'm up for having a crack.'

You meet people in your life who want to give you all the reasons they can muster for why something shouldn't happen, but I soon realised that Bell wasn't one of them. He was instantly enthused about the prospect and the gears in his mind were obviously clicking over, working out how he could make it happen. He animatedly began outlining how he aspired to combine contending for victory with raising money for charity, and explained that Kearnsy had not been the only celebrity crew member. Others who had sailed with him previously included champion boxer Danny Green, swimmers Grant Hackett and Geoff Huegill, cricketer Matthew Hayden, surfer Layne Beachley and Wallabies star Phil Waugh. He hoped to have Sydney Roosters fullback Anthony Minichiello and television presenter Karl Stefanovic as part of his next crew.

'We're always on the lookout for people who have been successful to be a part of the crew,' he said. 'I want this to be about the team. A lot of the time it's about the skipper or the owner, but I want this to be about everybody on board. It's about the crew, not just the boat. And I genuinely reckon we can win the bloody thing.

'If you're prepared to give it a go and can handle the work, I'm prepared to make it happen.'

He didn't mention anything about vomit.

For the next few days the possibility of sailing in the race kept edging into my thoughts. An inner voice nagged at me, wondering how I would have responded if it had been horse trainer Bart Cummings offering me a ride on a Melbourne Cup contender. Chances like these don't come around every day, the voice kept saying. So I sent Bell an email, letting him know:

'I'm definitely keen but I want to make sure that I can contribute. I won't be in it if I'm any kind of hindrance or hassle for you guys. If you think I can play a part, let's discuss it.'

He wrote back: 'If you want in, let's go for it.'

Over the next couple of months my crash course in 'supermaxis for dummies' got underway. It began with a two-day Safety and Sea Survival course that included a session with 10 other sailors in the Qantas training pool at Sydney airport. One exercise involved being tossed into rough water in full wet-weather clothing and scrambling into an inflatable raft that resembled a floating two-man tent. I stole a glance at a couple of the old blokes doing the course, wondering if they were up to it, and I'm sure they did the same to me. Not long afterwards we were all huddled aboard, proudly drenched and grinning. One of them turned to the other, nodded in my direction and said: 'Told you he'd be right.'

The yacht's general manager, 'Black Joe' Akacich, was our sailing coach and went through reams of theory as well as taking us on six or seven practice runs in the harbour. We took part in the Big Boat Challenge, in which the supermaxis complete two circuits of Sydney Harbour, and it struck me how Investec Loyal was like this magnificent sword, thrusting through the waves.

I was introduced to the pit, an area perhaps two or three metres square in the middle of the yacht, which would be my working station.

Black Joe explained that there were three important tasks I needed to be mindful of during the race. The first was to operate a series of buttons that controlled the electric winches.

The second was to ensure that the sheets and halyards (ropes) were out of everybody's way, because if a rope became tangled around a sailor's ankle it could rip him overboard. 'And what's the other task?' I wanted to know.

'Your third job is to just bloody well make sure you hold on,' came Joe's reply.

Fortunately my low centre of gravity gave me confidence that my stability and balance was the equal of most on board.

About the only time I became nervous in the weeks before the big race was when a Daily Telegraph photographer asked me to pose for a shot – scaling the mast. 'I'm not real big on heights,' I protested.

'Nah, you'll be sweet,' a few of the crew started to chortle, and before I knew it I was in a harness being hoicked up the 50-metre mast by a winch. The photographer wanted me to go all the way up, which would have had me about on par with the trucks whizzing past on the Anzac Bridge, but I was not having any of that. About 15 metres up would get the job done. An awkward smile for the camera and the harness was straight on its way back down to the deck. I had signed up for the high seas not the high trapeze.

The only other cause for slight nerves was how the Australian Paralympic Committee would regard the expedition south. The 2012 London Paralympics would be held in a little over eight months, and the officials might have reservations about one of their highest profile athletes being seen to take his eye off the ball. London would be my fourth Paralympics, and a chance to win a third consecutive gold medal in the wheelchair marathon. The APC's contention was that they were trying to get the Paralympics taken seriously and that interrupting a few weeks of training to compete in a yacht race could undermine those efforts. People wouldn't expect to see Cathy Freeman sailing off into the sunset across Bass Strait nine months out from an Olympic Games. My contention was that the Sydney to Hobart would not impact on my physical preparation, but passing it up would be a regret that could unsettle my mental preparation. Sometimes you only get one opportunity in life and you need to grab it.