Interview with Ben Gotsell for Mutiny

Why on earth would you want to sign up to something like this?
I’m not very adventurous. So you know you’ve always got people who have stories about backpacking on a camel across Bali, and riding to another island on a stingray? I thought maybe it was time I got a story myself. And I think I had a quarter-life crisis. Everyone around me was getting married, and I’d done nothing. Things got a bit stagnant. And I’d always wanted to do something at sea, but I didn’t have the right credentials.

Why do you think you were chosen?
I suppose everyone on the team had a different attribute to bring to the voyage.  I guess there were aspects of my personality which could assist people on the way. Or drive people insane.

How did you prepare for the series?
I stopped drinking, and I ate healthily, because some of my levels are out of whack. I have this theory that, because I’m overweight, I was the perfect candidate to be put on the boat. I’m relatively fit, I’m just a bit overweight. I’m an ideal man to be marooned on a boat because I don’t need a lot of food – I can survive on my own blubber!

What were your worries going in to the series?
My honest fear was that I was worried about the credentials of the other people getting involved. I didn’t know if they’d just go down the reality TV route and just pick people who were going to go insane and offer the best telly. That wasn’t the case in the slightest. And I was quite worried about Ant Middleton – I’d watched him on his other programmes and he was quite barky. I was thinking “That’s not man management skills.” He’s not actually like a proper captain. His sailing credentials don’t really exist. But now I know him, and he was great. It was completely down to his man management skills and leadership that we got there. And Conrad’s sailing experience. And Freddie and Chris’ sailing experience.

What was the reality of the experience like?
I went in there with a lot of questions about myself. But I realised the questions I was asking were the wrong questions. The answers I got out of it were interesting. I like to do a lot of people watching, and get quite deep at times, and wonder what makes men tick. And just seeing how fragile blokes can be. I think this really exposed the fragility of masculinity. Everyone wants to push themselves to the limit, but in the end we’re all flesh and bone. And forging bonds with people without social media was amazing. You’re basically weighed by what you’ve done in life. Someone who’s done a load of superficial things but isn’t a very interesting person is a very boring person on a boat. But someone who’s done a bit and slowly reveals it when you’re sitting with them on watch at 3:30am, when you might sit there and talk about their kids, you see a totally different side to them. And there’s no beers involved. When was the last time you sat down and had a four hour chat without a beer in your hand?

What did you miss the most, from everyday life?
Instantly you always think about missing food. I didn’t really think about missing family, because I always knew I’d reach the end, I wouldn’t die.  Well, we could have died in a few dodgy moments. I probably missed something stupid like takeaways. Or looking at women.  Stuff like that. Walking down the road in the slipstream of a really beautiful woman and enjoying their perfume. But when you’re on a boat and someone hasn’t had a wash in two weeks, and you’re tired and hungry, it’s not the most attractive thing. And I missed warm clothes.

Did you get enough food and sleep?
I’ve got quite a weird sleep pattern anyway. I was hallucinating at some points. Yeah, I was [probably on three hours sleep, but then it might rain one night and you wouldn’t get any sleep. As for food, I’m not really a foodie person. If food was a pill, I wouldn’t mind at all. But obviously you miss a chicken korma and a beer.

What kind of relationships did you form?
Very strange ones. You know everything about everyone, because you hear their stories. You know a bloke’s favourite meal, or the thing he likes about his wife. Or something his kids did last summer. So you end up knowing people really intimately even though you’ve only been with them a short space of time. Some people might be great to spend a couple of hours with in the pub, but maybe not in a boat for that long. And then other blokes you think you’ll end up knowing for the rest of your life. I send Dr Luke a medical query every week. It’s more of a burden to him than a friendship, I think. And I keep calling Freddy with celestial questions when I’m on the piss at 2:30am with my mates.

What was Ant like as a skipper?
I’ve got more of a professional relationship with him now. When I see him, it’s like “Hello mate, how are you doing?” But I wouldn’t necessarily give him a call. In my world, I’m my alpha male, on a building site or something. We did have a few arguments, butted heads a few times. But the I had a lot of chats with him – we were on watches together – and he was very personable. Not necessarily on camera, but he’d talk about his family and stuff. And then he’d realise how vulnerable he felt, and he’d change the subject or make a joke. But there were a few moments where we actually got quite close in conversation, which was really nice. So he’s a nice bloke, but initially it was quite difficult for me at the beginning to see him as the captain.

What were your lowest moments?
Losing the instant companionship after it was over. You’re suddenly in a hotel room and you don’t have the blokes around you. Because it’s not normal to have blokes around you all the time. And the thing was, everyone was a real professional in their field, so you’d have such a knowledge pool of people from all around the country, and you could ask them the most obscure questions and get an answer. You could ask Freddy or Conrad about starts and boats, Ant about military stuff, Luke a medical question, or Dan about camera shots and exposures. And to go from that to nothing… it’s always a deflating feeling, when you’re a band of brothers together, and then it finishes.

What were the high points?
Just like mad memories of seeing the island, or shooting stars, or dolphins or whales. Little successful things, walking into the jungle with Luke looking for fruit – when are you ever going to do that again. My biggest high point was in Vanuatu. It was part of an agreement for them to go pig hunting was that I’d help the villagers build a house. All my life I’d wanted to work in conflict zones, to rebuild places. But my qualifications never fitted the mould. So when I got to Vanuatu and was teaching them rudimentary physics with stones and hose pipes, their minds were blown. Just to get their respect was great. These guys were hard bastards. So to get respect like that was mad.

What did you learn from this experience?
I think modern man is capable of a lot more than we give him credit for. Until you’re put in a horrible situation, you can’t really say. But I think we stood up to the challenge. But we’re also just as fragile as a flower on a beach at times. We might break down and cry, and be scared of the storms. It’s weird. It’s very hard to summarise.