Angus Collins

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0:48That's why over 200 ,000 happy customers have made the switch. Upgrade your space today. Visit washablesofas.com now and bring home a sofa made for life. That's washablesofas.com. Offers are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply. You are listening to Ruthie's Table 4 in partnership with Montclair. There are many ways to do things. If I'm thinking about going from London to New York, I consider what flight to take early morning or late afternoon. Angus Collins rose there. If I'm thinking about taking a journey around the whole of Great Britain, I would consider whether to do so by train or by car.

1:27Angus Rose. Thinking about raising awareness for a cause I feel passionate about, I plan a fundraiser at home or in the River Cafe. For the cause Angus feels most passionate about men's mental health, Angus Rose. And when I say he rose, this is what I mean. Angus has been hailed as the greatest ocean rower of our time, setting records for the fastest and youngest four-man crossing of not just the Indian Ocean, but any ocean. He's rode across the Atlantic, not once, but twice, and again faster than anyone before him, and he's not finished yet. In a few months, Angus is aiming to be the first to row solo and unsupported around Great Britain, but today he isn't going anywhere.

2:12He's here at the River Cafe to talk about endurance, motivation, his love for the sea, and the food which sustains him there, and the many ways to do things. He's my friend. I'm excited. Let's explore. What an amazing introduction. Thank you so much. So there we go. So we, you know, we've had lots of guests and many of them go in the River Cafe kitchen before we do the podcast to make a pasta with Joseph or a soup or watch how a cake is being made. Stephen Fry did a polenta cake. David Beckham did a pasta. So for your experience in the River Cafe kitchen today, you made go on I haven't made, well I suppose I have I've poured water into a packet of freeze dried food and this is the food that we normally eat on our big expeditions So Joseph what do you think as the head chef my partner and Well I'm interested in I mean it's definitely not going on any menu I'm a little bit scared Generally we say this is kind of the best flavour Here we've gone for bolognese.

3:20Best flavor is a low bar in the freeze-dried food world. So there's a bolognese. You want to have a... Nice packaging. Yeah, I'll talk into that. And do you know how to make something dried to then make it? Well, do you have any idea how they would do this? So there's two ways generally. You've got freeze-dried or dehydrated. So real term is freeze-dried. So it's essentially cooked, put into a tray and then frozen and evaporated at the same time. Ready for my next expedition in June. I've been going through every company basically globally trying to find the right food that I want to eat. That's also the right macro nutrients and the balance is right.

4:01And I think it's going to come down to the fact that I'm going to get Elsa to cook my food for me and we're going to freeze dry it at home. Because you're married to it. Yeah, so Elsa, my partner, she's an amazing chef. I'm going to see in September. Yeah, wedding soon. She's an amazing cook, and I love her cooking. So Joseph is now tasting, what is that one? Pasta bolognese. Pasta bolognese. What would you say?

4:28I'm not enjoying it, but it's not, you know. So your options are you can either try and battle your way through a packet or what I do is put about 20 % extra water in it. Yeah. Don't look at it and just swallow it.

4:45I'm not doing it. Oh, Ruthie, you've got to have a try. You can definitely eat it. It smells fine. And have you always had enough? Have you ever got close to running out? Yeah, Indian Ocean, we were meant to be going to Mauritius and then we got stuck in a big storm, so then we had to redirect up to the Seychelles, which added an extra 25 days onto our crossing. And we pretty much finished the last meal on the day we arrived into the Seychelles. Wow. So you made it. We made it. Yeah. But we were very skinny by the time we finished that one. Do you fish? I have fished. I'm not good at it. However, I have done, I've done a lot of rowing up on the west coast of Scotland and we've caught a lot of mackerel before.

5:26So I will be buying a little frying pan, I think, just in case, because that experience of catching a mackerel on your own off the west coast of Scotland and frying it up, that appeals to me. You're going to have a... Yeah, you could just eat your raw. You could just have a carpaccio. Tonight we're going to have a carpaccio. My probably favourite meal of my life was mid-ocean in the Atlantic. It was me and three best mates. We were winning the race, and we had one guy on board who wanted to fish. And we basically... I didn't know anything about fishing. The other two weren't interested. So we said, look, if we're in first place and we row a set amount of miles the day before, you can fish for 15 minutes the next day and we did exactly that we rode i think it was an 85 mile day so i said to jack right next tomorrow you can go fishing so he had his little hand line out and caught a dorado a couple of feet long and as i said i know nothing about fishing i presumed jack knew what to do because he's a farmer he wanted to go fishing turns out he didn't know what to do with this fish so then we've got four guys on a boat we've got a rusty safety knife that's on deck and we're hacking up the fish with that so it didn't look pretty but it was the best meat i've ever had and four guys on a boat mid-ocean we all stopped rowing just to like appreciate what we're going through and just raw sushi me yeah so maybe you take a really sharp knife yeah you need a really good knife i mean you could spend 10 minutes with us here we can show you how to yeah i definitely need some some guidance on that and then you could just have a little bit of like you wouldn't need much like a little bit of vinegar and salt you know you just put it on yeah how's climate affected over the last i'd say three years there hasn't really been a trade winds normally we can expect and i've noticed this in the atlantic as well going from east to west normally you have this strong trade wind that kind of predicts what the weather's going to be doing for that summer and we haven't had that for the last kind of three or four years which isn't great for me um it means it's harder to predict when to leave what's the best route going to be it's worse for our environment i think it's a prime example showing that weather is changing and yeah i'm i'm now seeing that do you see fewer whales or more whales or anywhere else around britain we'll get orcas up at the top which they had disappeared for a while and now there are orcas back up in the west coast of scotland in the atlantic the biggest problem we're having is um blue marlin which are kind of sailfish they travel up to 60 kilometers an hour and a lot of the what started there was an article in the new york times where sharks were being washed up at the east coast of america with puncture holes in them they didn't know what it was and they then found out it was the blue marlin attacking sharks which had never happened before we're now getting our rowing boats pierced by blue marlin and we had one team uh four years ago where a blue marlin came through the bottom of the boat and these are boats that are built of solid carbon like very very strong boats blue marlin came through the bottom of the boat and in between the guy's legs if it had been three inches to left or right he would have been dead and they think the the reason these blue marlins are attacking the boats is because they're being the overfishing in the atlantic that there's not enough prey for these blue marlins so they're now going for bigger fish and sharks and they're confusing our boats for bigger fish we've already had two strikes this year there's a race going on at the moment and yeah two boats have got holes in them so that that's what do you do when that happens yeah we have a full repair kit in the boat so we've got the carbon and the epoxy and it's a sticky long smelly process but you can there was one team last year actually the hole was so big that the only thing they could bung it up with was with a bottle of champagne which they saved for halfway so they had to quickly drink the bottle of champagne shove it in the hole and put some carbon around it to fix it.

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11:20We've talked about rowing across oceans and around countries, but what I perhaps would like to ask you is where did this all begin? Tell me about your early childhood. You grew up in a family in Britain. Yeah, well, actually I was born in Guam. My parents were scuba diving instructors. Where is Guam? Guam is in? North Micronesia, where the submarines leave to go down to the Marianas Trench, the deepest place in the world. Mum and I left there when I was about three months old. My dad moved back to America. Then I was brought up in the UK. I think your grandparents were quite present in your life, were they?

11:58Yes, they were. So my grandpa, as a family, we're all very nautical. So my grandpa, he was a world champion sailor. so in the summers me my sister my cousins we'd be dropped off in burnham-on-crouch which is where he lived in east coast essex and it was basically go and have fun for a couple of weeks play with boats burn rope play with fiberglass cause havoc and i absolutely loved it and he was a massive part of my upbringing and and then my granny passed away probably a decade ago now and she was a massive part of my life. I'd say she became a really good friend when I was in my 20s and she started at dinner with her a couple of times a week and she was awesome.

12:40What was her story? She had an amazing story. So she was actually brought up in a Chinese prisoner of war camp. My great grandpa was into railways somehow, I'm not sure to what extent, and he was brought out to China to increase the railways they had there. The war started and yeah, granny was then brought up in a prisoner of war camp so she had this amazing style of cooking which she had learned from Chinese people so even though we what we hear about the Chinese prisoner of wars she was apparently looked after very well and they were given good education in the camp and they were taught by locals how they cook how they cook the rice 40 late 40s and she She was educated how to cook Chinese style, but also had an infinite love of butter.

13:33So everything she cooked was really good rice with a whole load of butter. And that was generally her dish. Sounds delicious to me. I loved it. And it probably explains why she died of a heart attack with the amount of butter she put in. But she was a great cook. And so you grew up in this house. There was a love of the sea from your grandfather. Your mother was a scuba diver. Mother was scuba diving instructor, and then my stepdad was a big sailor. He loved the nautical world as well. So as a family, yeah, we're better on the water than we are on dry land. My sister's also rode oceans. My cousin, yeah, she's rode the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean, both times racing against me, both times she's broken.

14:15She's younger than you. Yeah, three years younger than me. Yeah, she's quickly proven that she's better than me at everything now, which is... But I had a great upbringing with her, and I got sent to a boarding school age seven. Yeah, very early, age seven. Do you remember the food there? Nothing positive. Okay. I remember being very upset with Jamie Oliver when the turkey twizzler got banned because that was a highlight of my day at school was a turkey twizzler, which I completely understand why it was banned, but that was the most flavoursome meal that we had at boarding school. And you'd go home how often?

14:49When it's age seven, how long would you go? Probably once every six, seven weeks. And you'd see your grandmother? See grandmother, see granny, see my mum. And I loved boarding school. You did? I absolutely loved it. But it definitely didn't do the mental health any positives. I don't think it's quite right to be sending kids away age seven. But back then it was more of the norm. So you have children? Yeah, I've got children. How old are they? Nine and seven. So I'm trying to send them up to Scotland at boarding school now. Sadly Elsa won't let us. You would never do that. I wouldn't. I couldn't.

15:26No, I want to keep them as close as possible. It always interests me that people who had really terrible experiences at boarding school will still send their children to read what they had. Yeah, well, this is what I didn't really understand. My dad and my eldest brother both went to the same boarding school that I went to, and both of them hated it. And you still chose to send me there. And as I say, fortunately, I loved it. Our playtime was build dens in the woods, go swimming, play a sport. and for someone like me who loves the outdoors, you're never bored. Go and catch some rabbits or catch some fish.

15:57Sounds like quite a nice school. It was a lovely school, yeah. I loved it, very fortunate. How did the rowing happen? I never really thought about rowing. I can remember from day one saying I wanted to work in adventure. I didn't know what that meant. It's actually my uncle who rowed across the Atlantic. He missed the world record. he won the race but wanted to get the world record and I was working in London at the time I'd just finished university I'd just trekked across Papua New Guinea had this dream of working this world of adventure but didn't know what it meant, how to do that so then basically came to terms with the fact that right, the aim is try and make as much money as possible so that I can then pay for my own adventures so I went in and did recruitment in financial crime and compliance in the financial sector.

16:48For me, that was my biggest endurance challenge I've ever been through. I couldn't do it at all. And my uncle then said, look, people are interested in the sport of ocean rowing. We've come up with a cool boat design. Do you want to come and work with us? Next thing I know, I've moved out to Essex. I've quit my job in recruitment and started building these rowing boats. And I had never done a row at this stage. I've never river rowed. I've never accomplished. You never did. Sailing, windsurfing, kitesurfing, all of that I love. I've never been rowing. When we think of a rowboat that goes out here in the Oxford-Cambridge boat race or from Henley, and then you're a rower, tell me just basically what is the difference between a rower and a rower?

17:27There are basically, there are more similarities to a sailing boat than there are to a rowing boat with ocean rowing. So a river rowing boat weighs under 100 kilos. It's a foot and a half wide. With our ocean rowing boats, we've got, they're nine meters long. they're 1.5 meters wide they've got enough food for four people for 90 days the row deck is kind of i'd say nine foot by three foot so you can you can walk around on it as opposed to on a river rowing but you can't and then we've got two cabins one at the front one at the back that you can sleep in that's called the navigation a water maker so we're using solar panel to power up a water maker pulling up the salt water desalinating it that's all in the cabins and then those cabins also help if the boat does capsize if you're in a big wave and it flips you over those cabins then flip the boat back over again so it's self-rights within a couple of seconds has there been a time when you really thought maybe this is it maybe yeah you know this is all gonna be over i think the more i do it the less that happens and especially as i'm the person who's built in the past built these boats it's easier to trust in yourself than it is somebody else but the indian ocean is notoriously the hardest ocean to row and we did that first with the atlantic it's just it's quite a deep ocean and the the bottom bed doesn't change in height that much we don't have any islands in the middle of the atlantic so generally the weather is pretty consistent you can see a storm coming in in three days time or five days time whereas in the indian ocean it goes from very deep to very shallow very regularly and that means you get basically weather patterns that come out of nowhere and i can remember two things on the indian ocean the first was our first big storm and it was when the malaysian airline went down 2013 yeah were you there then i was there then they sent out a search and rescue vessel to try and find the black box and the search rescue vessel had to turn around because there was a storm that was so big that this whatever it is 150 foot search rescue vessel couldn't cope with a storm we were in that storm in a nine meter rowing boat and i can remember going into the cabin and there were fairly normal waves wind 12 to 15 knots like beautiful rowing conditions and i came out of the cabin two hours later after my sleep and just looking up at walls of water and i'd say the waves that yeah between 40 and 60 foot we're flying down these waves surfing and i can remember just thinking i'm out of my depth this is i don't know how to cope with this and we had one guy on the boat who was a great ultra endurance athlete but had never done anything nautical and he was on the oars and i remember him just like laughing and smiling about how big these waves were and i remember just grabbing him to be like right you get in the cabin we need to sort this problem out because if you're laughing at this you don't know what you're laughing at um and it was three days we were basically just being thrown around normally we have our desired course over ground so which directions we want to get to when you're in those conditions it's go whatever direction the wind takes you and the waves are taking you because you're not going to be able to control it you've just talked about emotion you've talked about endurance so let's talk about the mental health i know that your row around Britain is for giving something back to a foundation, a charity that has helped you.

21:00Why mental health? So I had a big mental health breakdown around my 30th birthday. How old are you now? 36. So six years ago. Yeah, six years ago. I'm still working it out now as to why. Had you been rowing? So at this stage, I'd rowed the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic twice. my company was succeeding I was doing talks around the world for leadership programs and big CEOs and broken world record in the Indian Ocean broken world record across the Atlantic Ocean but the reality was I was actually massively depressed and I felt like I couldn't tell anyone that I felt like because we say in endurance challenges 90 % of it is mental obviously being physically fit helps you but if you haven't got it mentally you're not going to succeed I essentially didn't have the balls to go and ask anyone as to what was going on and it was my 30th birthday I speak to my family and they want me to go and see my my family up in Suffolk and all go out for a meal together I told them I was with my friends in London my mates in London same thing they wanted a party with me and I told them I was with my family in Suffolk and actually at the time I was living on a boat in Burnham-on-Crouch and I was smoking a lot of pot at the time I'd kind of got into this stage of working really hard to run the business rowing really really hard in training and then my way of relaxing was to smoke a joint and I'm not actually anti-cannabis I think for some people it can be good for me it is not a good drug I've got a very addictive personality and I just turn lazy and I don't approach any of the problems that are in my head I had this depression that I was blocking basically by smoking pot and yeah I remember 30th birthday I got everything ready to end my own life and ironically it was actually cannabis that saved my life that I'd smoked too many joints and passed out and was woken up the next morning ready to go to work and I completely ignored everything that had happened 24 hours before and it took actually until meeting Elsa so from September to November I completely ignored it didn't I had one phone call with an NHS psychiatrist which sadly was a really bad experience and they basically turned around and said look you've got a good business yeah you've got good friends you've got family you've got nothing to worry about and I was like that's my problem I know everything is as it should be but I still feel this way I feel like I don't want to live but other than that I didn't talk to anyone else and when I met Elsa I was going out we're in New York for Columbia University and Elsa was one of the students doing the leadership program I was teaching the leadership program we're talking all about some of the stories that I've learned from being out of sea and And she basically called me out on it and said, I call bullshit.

24:08There's something else there. There's another reason. It's not all down to this resilience training and leadership. You're escaping from something. And I remember thinking, it's like, who is this chick who's just coming out telling me that I've got these problems, X, Y? And she was absolutely right. And that's when recovery then started, where the more I then talked about it, and then I went into therapy and antidepressants and everything. But I was probably suffering for, I'd say, two years without really admitting it and doing anything about it and being scared to talk about it and being scared to approach anyone about it.

24:44So now, yeah, I've kind of transitioned my life. I've done, I did a master's degree in positive psychology and coaching psychology. And now I want to use this sport of ocean rowing and my stories to help people that are struggling. And along the way, I'm raising money for a charity called James's Place. What is that? Great charity. They help suicidal men basically get from the lowest point of their life to back up and running, completely free of charge, incredible service, all very professional. They started their first centre was in Liverpool, which has got the highest suicide rate in the UK.

25:21Then they went to Newcastle, which has got the second highest suicide rate. They've got a place in London, hoping to build a new one with the new funds coming in, in Bristol, Birmingham. so they're growing around the whole of the UK hopefully we'll get up into Scotland but they're they're doing a lot lot of good for people who are struggling with mental health and they're kind of like the tip of the iceberg they're looking to help people that are suicidal whereas my aim is yes we get to that stage that the suicide rates in the UK are declining and now let's look into the whole well-being of men's mental health as opposed to just the suicide but we need to start at the top.

25:57So at the moment, suicide is where we're focusing, which is sad, but with my experiences, hopefully I can create a strong enough message that we're going to raise some good funds for them and make a real good change. And that's what the trip around the UK is going to happen. Exactly, yeah. So rowing around Britain next June, solo, which has never been done before, and we're aiming to raise 250 grand for the charity, for James' place.

26:26The River Cafe Winter Set Lunch is now running from Monday to Thursday. Reserve a booking on www.rivercafe.co.uk or give us a call.

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27:27If you're not absolutely in love, send it back for a full refund. No return shipping or restocking fees. Every penny back. Upgrade now at washablesofas.com. Offers are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply. Parking shouldn't slow you down. ParkWiz gives every driver a shortcut. Book ahead, save up to 50 % and skip the hassle of circling the block. Park smarter, park faster. ParkWiz. Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. It's really easy on a boat, especially when you've got this staggered shift system that you may not see one or two of your crewmates for weeks on end because you're just going from your cabin, walking two steps to your rowing machine, swapping over with your cabin partner.

28:11You might just say, how's the weather? Wet and cold. and then he gets into the cabin you get onto your rowing seat yeah you can go weeks without having a proper conversation so when those times happen and generally when you're might be you're going into a bad weather system we'll start having morning briefings and that would always be around like between eight and nine o 'clock in the morning the sun has rise starting the new day and we all have a bag of porridge and sit around two people will still be rowing but there's a briefing that's around having your coffee and your porridge in the morning but really that's the only time that we're all together as a team which is quite sad I suppose.

28:51I thought when you said that you had other people with you on a boat that that would be part for the power of rowing and also partly to alleviate the solitariness of being on your own but when you don't talk to other people as you described how does that feel? I have a system when you're on the boat because it's all about learning how to motivate each other on the boat if i'm in a bad mood and i'm grumpy and i'm sad if someone comes on behind me and taps me on the back and gives it the oh it's all going to be okay i hate that and if anything that sends me the opposite way whereas um i've done two crossings with a really good guy called jason he's american from california he loves that kind of positive energy and if he's feeling low i know he's the kind of guy yeah you give him a slap on the back and you give them some an american talk and that's what motivates him so it's kind of working out your your teammates and then for me if i get if i'm in a bad mood i don't want to talk to anyone so i'll come out in the oars and say that straight out to the guys when i unless you need me i'm going to put harry potter in my ears and i'm just going to listen to that because no matter what you say it's going to piss me off because i'm in that mood it is reading what the other person yeah wants to hear i think that is on over how good are you at rowing like rowing as a sport is a very basic sport i can teach someone to row in a couple of hours yeah yeah how do you row what would you how would you teach me um i'd get you out on a boat and it's basically three processes it's pull with your arms straighten your legs start again yeah and so that bit i've trained russian orthodox priests i've trained stay at home as mums who have done no exercises before and they want to row across the ocean i've trained a boat with four guys on it that only had three legs one guy had no legs one guy had one leg and the other two had one leg each um so rowing is easy that bit's fine navigation across the atlantic pretty straightforward there's no islands in the middle of the ocean as long as a cargo ship doesn't hit you that's fine so i think what makes you a good ocean rower is exactly that it's reading your teammates knowing when you need to get more out of them and how do you get more out of them and how do they react to you?

31:05And when you think about the emotional eating back to the food, you know, that you would, would you say I'm feeling this way? I'm feeling upset. I don't want to do this. I wish I hadn't done it. I'm scared. Is there a way you can listen to Harry Potter? You can dream. Is there a sense if I really'd like to have that, some food to make me feel better? Yeah. um and that's where the snap pack's really good so generally we're looking at the snap pack as it's not included in your macros we're not i'm not don't worry if it's got too much sugar or too much salt or too much chocolate whatever it is it's that's the food when you're in a bad mood what do you want to lift you up um so for me i love built-on and i remember gus so gus a really good friend of mine i've rode the atlantic with him um i was actually at school with him from the age of seven on my 100th day at sea so I'd spent 70 days at sea on the Indian Ocean and then when we're on day 30 going across the Atlantic with Gus I went into my cabin had a sleep came out two hours later and Gus had used our dagger board which is used to kind of help steer the boat he had pulled out all the different parts of all the different freeze-dried food and made canapes for me so I had a little bit of yeah the beans from the pulled pork and beans and then a little bit of spaghetti from that one and some beef on top and then he made these tiny little canapes put them on top of the the dagger board then we have rehydration sachets to keep our salts higher in the water so he made a different cocktail for me of all of our different flavors rehydration sachets and I came out on deck and burying my bit crude especially on a food podcast but generally we row naked.

32:48So then suddenly there's four of us on deck, butt naked, eating these canapes, having cocktails. Is it cold? No, because we're leaving from the Canary Islands in December, but so the Canary's is as cold as it gets, and that's 18 to 22 degrees. By the time you're halfway, the problem's the opposite, actually. It's just too hot. Yeah, the cabins turn into saunas. So you finish your two hours of rowing, and then you go and lie in a sauna for two hours trying to get to sleep. When do you feel you're the luckiest person in the world to be doing this? At the time, if you ask that mid-ocean, I would say when you can see Antigua, when you can see Hawaii, that is a very magical moment where you've just spent 30, 40 days out of sea, never seen anything else.

33:36The senses are, they explode. As soon as you see the island, you can smell all the grass and everything. That's magical. But then after that moment, I then go into quite high anxiety, whereas a lot of why I love ocean rowing is because I hate social media, I don't like emails, I don't like this constant communication, or I'm bad at constant communication. So being in the ocean, actually, I get a mental reset by being out there. I think that's one of the main reasons why I like being there. That's the sadder part of rowing an ocean is realizing that you go back to reality. Yeah. We always end the interview with a question, which is, If you need food, not for alleviating hunger or for sharing with your friends or for having a good time over lunch with your good friend or feeding your children, is there a food that you would go to for comfort?

34:29Yes, and it's very straightforward. For me, a steak and salad is always my favorite. I know I'm home when I've got a good steak and Elsa does an amazing salad. I don't know how they do it, the French. She gets the mix perfectly, just a really straightforward vinegar, olive oil, salt, nice big green leaves, and a steak. And if I could have that on the sofa chatting with Elsa, that's when I know I'm happy, I'm feeling good. And you're home. And I'm home. And that's what I look forward to. Thank you very much.

35:14Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table 4 in partnership with Montclair.

35:26We'll be right back.

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