This is John Fairfax and his rowing partner Sylvia Cook. They were both pretty darn crazy.
Wikipedia photo by Virgil Lucky.
I like to think of myself as a pretty normal guy. I have had some adventures in life, to be sure. However, I’ve never wrestled crocodiles in the Arctic or voluntarily swum with shrieking eels. My baser drives are tempered with a sensible instinct for self-preservation.
Sometimes folks just aren’t wired like the rest of us. Their survival safety valve just seems to be somehow stuck in the off position. These are the young men who improvise parachutes out of bed sheets and then leap off of tall buildings. Many, if not most, of them are hors de combat by their early twenties, succumbing to their poor life choices.
These unfortunate daredevils often die young and gloriously. Their last words are typically, “Hey, dude, check this out …” or “Yo, bro, hold my beer …” One such remarkable young man who actually survived to see adulthood was a full-time professional lunatic named John Fairfax.
Apparently rowing across oceans is a thing people do. That seems legit insane to me. Wikipedia photo by Fiann Paul.
The Maniac Sees the World
In 1959, John Fairfax took a plane to New York City with the intent of experiencing America. He drove from New York to San Francisco, sampling our amazing expansive country as he went. By the time he made it to California, he was broke as a skunk. He still somehow scored a bicycle and then headed south. His nebulous goal was to make his way back to Argentina to reconnect with his mother … on a bicycle. Fairfax biked as far as Guatemala, then hitchhiked his way to Panama. Following another brief foray into piracy, he made the last leg to Argentina on horseback.
Once reestablished in Argentina, Fairfax became consumed with the idea of rowing solo across the Atlantic Ocean. This is the sort of thing normal people just read about. John Fairfax figured he’d actually give it a go. No one had ever done this before, so he would have to hustle if he wanted to be the first.
Fairfax obtained passage to England and spent two years in preparation for the voyage. He secured a custom-built, self-righting, self-bailing rowboat, which he christened Britannia, and struck out from the Canary Islands headed west. 180 days later, on 19 July 1969, he made landfall in Florida. The following day, the crew of Apollo 11 walked on the moon. He later received a congratulatory letter from the NASA astronauts that read, “Yours, however, was the accomplishment of one resourceful individual, while ours depended upon the help of thousands of dedicated workers in the United States and all over the world. As fellow explorers, we salute you on this great occasion.”
Just the Beginning …
So, what does a guy do after becoming the first man to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean? He naturally makes his way across the United States to attempt the same thing in the Pacific. However, this was a considerably bigger deal.
For starters, the Pacific Ocean is a good bit larger than the Atlantic. Though I’ve never personally had the pleasure, I’m told this trek is also substantially more arduous. Before he embarked on this crossing, he needed both a new boat and a stalwart companion. He christened the boat Britannia II. He found his rowing buddy by taking out a personal ad in The Times.
Sylvia Cook answered the advert. Sylvia seemed like a pretty normal Englishwoman right up until she agreed to climb in a tandem rowboat with a crazy person and strike out from San Francisco. The pair made landfall on Hayman Island in Australia 361 days later. They were the first humans to row all the way across the Pacific. Cook became the first woman to row across any of the planet’s several oceans.
Ummm….nope. YouTube frame grab.
The Rest of the Story
John Fairfax was actually married to his wife Tiffany for 31 years. That has got to have been a most remarkable woman. The couple settled in Florida but moved to Nevada after a hurricane wiped them out. Tiffany penned an astrology column for a Las Vegas newspaper for years.
Fairfax was a recognized expert at baccarat, becoming a fixture at Las Vegas casinos. This man, who once attempted suicide by jaguar and actually rowed his way across both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, died of natural causes in Henderson, Nevada, in 2012. He was 74 years old. John Fairfax packed enough living in those 74 years to shame a hundred normal men.