Janette Benaddi - Four Mums in a Boat - Friends who rowed 3000 miles, broke a world record and learnt a lot about life along the way

JANETTE BENADDIis a 52-year-old businesswoman from Leeds. She is married with two children.

HELEN BUTTERSis an NHS communications expert from North Yorkshire. She is 46 years old, married and has two children.

FRANCES DAVIESis a solicitor running her own law firm in Leeds. She is 48 years old, married with two sons and lives in York.

NIKI DOEGruns her own business and is a qualified rugby coach. She is 46 years old and lives in York with her husband and their two sons.

Copyright Copyright Dedication Epigraph Chapter 1 La Gomera Chapter 2 Holding On Chapter 3 The Beginning Chapter 4 The Team Chapter 5 Making It Happen Chapter 6 One Step Forward Chapter 7 Rose Chapter 8 Back Home Chapter 9 The North Sea Chapter 10 The Final Countdown Chapter 11 The Row Chapter 12 Christmas Chapter 13 Hurricane Chapter 14 Flow Chapter 15 Antigua Chapter 16 Re-entry Epilogue The Letters Photo Section

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2017

Copyright © Janette Benaddi, Helen Butters, Niki Doeg and Frances Davies 2017

Janette Benaddi, Helen Butters, Niki Doeg and Frances Davies asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9780008214821

This book is dedicated to you. We hope itwill inspire you to conquer your own ‘ocean’,whatever it may be .

JANETTE, HELEN, FRANCES AND NIKI

‘You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.’

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

Contents

Cover

About the Authors JANETTE BENADDI is a 52-year-old businesswoman from Leeds. She is married with two children. HELEN BUTTERS is an NHS communications expert from North Yorkshire. She is 46 years old, married and has two children. FRANCES DAVIES is a solicitor running her own law firm in Leeds. She is 48 years old, married with two sons and lives in York. NIKI DOEG runs her own business and is a qualified rugby coach. She is 46 years old and lives in York with her husband and their two sons.

Title Page

Copyright Copyright Copyright Dedication Epigraph Chapter 1 La Gomera Chapter 2 Holding On Chapter 3 The Beginning Chapter 4 The Team Chapter 5 Making It Happen Chapter 6 One Step Forward Chapter 7 Rose Chapter 8 Back Home Chapter 9 The North Sea Chapter 10 The Final Countdown Chapter 11 The Row Chapter 12 Christmas Chapter 13 Hurricane Chapter 14 Flow Chapter 15 Antigua Chapter 16 Re-entry Epilogue The Letters Photo Section An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2017 Copyright © Janette Benaddi, Helen Butters, Niki Doeg and Frances Davies 2017 Janette Benaddi, Helen Butters, Niki Doeg and Frances Davies asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9780008214821

Dedication This book is dedicated to you. We hope itwill inspire you to conquer your own ‘ocean’,whatever it may be . JANETTE, HELEN, FRANCES AND NIKI

Epigraph ‘You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.’ CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

Chapter 1La Gomera

Chapter 2Holding On

Chapter 3The Beginning

Chapter 4The Team

Chapter 5Making It Happen

Chapter 6One Step Forward

Chapter 7Rose

Chapter 8Back Home

Chapter 9The North Sea

Chapter 10The Final Countdown

Chapter 11The Row

Chapter 12Christmas

Chapter 13Hurricane

Chapter 14Flow

Chapter 15Antigua

Chapter 16Re-entry

Epilogue

The Letters

Photo Section

CHAPTER 1

La Gomera

‘To be is to do.’

SOCRATES

30 November 2015, San Sebastián Marina, La Gomera

‘This’, said Frances, shaking her head slowly as she stared at the waves smashing into the harbour wall below us, ‘is not an entry-level ocean.’

Standing next to her, looking at the violent swell just outside San Sebastián Marina in La Gomera, the rest of us – Janette, Helen and Niki – were inclined to agree. The waves were enormous and the distance we were about to row was substantial. Who on earth could have possibly thought this was a good idea? Collectively, we were about to leave four husbands, eight children, five dogs, two cats, two snakes and a gerbil and row 3,000 miles across one of the most dangerous oceans in the world. It is said that more people have travelled into space or climbed Mount Everest than have crossed the Atlantic in a rowing boat.

And not one of them, to be frank, was a middle-aged working mother from Yorkshire, firmly the wrong side of 40 (or 50), with little or (more accurately) no sporting prowess.

In fact, there was not a single Olympic athlete, extreme sportsman or endurance nut among the four of us. None of us had marched to a Pole or bivouacked on the side of a mountain or lived in a cave drinking nothing but rainwater with only a small rodent for company. That said, we weren’t totally unfit, sofa-bound sloths; Frances had done the Coast to Coast race from Nairn to Glen Coe, and Janette once did a 5-kilometre ‘fun run’ where she got covered in pink paint as she jogged around the grounds of Castle Howard. But essentially we were four mums who had met on the school run and decided to row an ocean.