By Niamh McAnally
20 February 2020
Antigua
The flare set fire to the evening sky. From the same boat, a second one blazed; its red sparks reflected on the dusky waters off the Antiguan coast. Two flares. Normally a sign of distress, a call for help, a plea for rescue, but not these flares, not this time, not this night.
An hour earlier, locals and visitors, cruisers and superyacht staff had begun to gather around a podium at Nelson’s Dockyard in English Harbour on the southern end of Antigua. The atmosphere tingled. Word had gone out: “They’re coming!”
Outside the inlet, wind drove white caps onto nearby rocks and pelicans deferred their dives for fish. In the fading light, a dot appeared on the horizon. It disappeared, then reappeared as it rode the swells. The closer it got, the more details emerged — a white boat, maybe 20 feet long, oars dipping in a lumpy sea.
Stick figures became the silhouettes of two men slicing their way home. The media and race officials of the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge jumped in powerboats and sped out to sea to guide them in. Only a couple more strokes and these two middle-aged British men would complete their arduous voyage, having rowed 3,000 nautical miles across the Atlantic, from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean.
As the tiny vessel skimmed between the red and green buoys marking the finish line, the cannon fired and the harbour erupted in a cacophony of horns, hooters, ships’ bells and whistles. From sailboats to luxury yachts, every deck of every moored boat was laden with mariners applauding their achievement, and along the cliff road citizens and expats waved their national flags.
In keeping with race tradition, the two balding, bearded men stood up in their tiny boat, despite the choppy sea, lit their hand-held flares and raised them to the skies. The red-hot blaze illuminated their weary but elated faces. Smoke snaked its way around their torsos and morphed into clouds of grey against the dark green hills. The media boat circled them, filming their moment of triumph. Race officials in an inflatable dinghy followed their arc. Round and around the rowers they sped, churning up a congratulatory spray. In the centre of the rowboat, still as bronze, stood the two men who had dared to dream.
On the quay, emotion overwhelmed the well-wishers who waited for them to step ashore. “I’m in bits,” one tourist said, “and I don’t even know them.” “Me neither,” said a local woman, passing her a tissue. “I came down because I heard they had no family here to greet them.”
Beside them, a proud father, who’d flown from South Africa, chatted with his 25-year-old son, who’d crossed the finish line the previous week. Four small children with Scottish accents stood next to their mum, anxiously awaiting their dad, who still had six more days to row. This crowd of international strangers had become friends, united in recognition of the potential of the human spirit.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the Danish race director, Carsten Olsen, announced, “let’s give it up for team Atlantic Dream Challenge.”
Cheers echoed off the harbour walls as the vessel touched the dock. Onlookers found it hard to grasp that this boat — adorned with inspirational stickers, signatures of supporters, and rust stains that dripped from a now defunct solar panel — this small wooden boat, whose only form of propulsion came from the carbon fibre oars and the sheer determination of the men who plied them, had just traversed a tumultuous sea. In homes across the world, devoted followers watched the livestream on the internet as these two stocky, unathletic-looking men posed for photos. Between them they held the official banner which read: We Rowed the Atlantic.
“Would you like to see them step ashore?” Carsten asked the crowd.
Another cheer. One after the other, the men set foot on solid ground and swayed. Marine-lagged, their bodies were still tuned to the rhythms of their watery home. They weren’t the first to arrive, nor were they the last, but when they took their place on the podium, next to the sign documenting their certified time, they hugged, slapped each other on the back and bellowed a winner’s roar. They’d done it. They had damn-well-done-it.
Questions peppered the minds of those who stood in awe. Who were these intrepid characters, Paul Hopkins and Phil Pugh from Newcastle upon Tyne? And why? Why did they decide to row across an ocean? Not the prepared why they told the press or the noble why they told their friends, but the real why they told themselves in the dark of night. The why that drove them during the years of preparation and enabled them to say goodbye to loved ones they prayed they would see again. The why that made quitting not an option when they faced storms and equipment failure in the middle of Poseidon’s rage, and the why they had yet to discover once they’d stepped on dry land and reflected on who they had become during those 70 days, nine hours and 11 minutes at sea.
This story is an excerpt from McAnally’s FLARES UP: A Story Bigger Than The Atlantic, which won the 2025 Independent Press Award for Action and Adventure and was shortlisted for the prestigious Sunday Times Vikki Orvice Award. The whimsical short story series Falmouth Freddy and the Cruising Kanes by McAnally was serialized in Caribbean Compass in 2024. February 2025 marks the five-year anniversary since Hopkins and Pugh rowed ashore in English Harbour.
