Rowing solo: Roz Savage crosses Pacific
Papua New Guinea (Global Adventures): A British woman did set a new record by rowing solo 6,000 miles (9,656 kilometers) across the Pacific Ocean. Rosalind (Roz) Savage started the first stage of her expedition in 2008 by rowing 2,598 miles (4,181 kilometers) from San Francisco to Hawaii. It took her 99 days, 8 hours and 55 minutes to complete the trip. In 2009, the second leg followed by rowing from Hawaii to the Tarawa atoll in Kiribati. A video showing her departure from the Hawaiian Islands is available on YouTube here.
Adverse winds and currents, dwindling food supplies, and a broken water maker forced her to abandon the original plan to raw 2,580 miles (4,152 kilometers) from Hawaii to Tuvalu and divert to the Tarawa atoll instead. A YouTube video shows Roz Savage making landfall in Tarawa is available here. Mid ocean currents forced her again to change course on the final phase of her journey. Instead of making it to the eastern shore of Australia, the Roz Savage was forced to head for the northern coast of Papua New Guinea instead. The 42-year old woman from London did row 46 days to reach Madang after starting in Kiribati.
"Each of my big ocean rows has taken about one million oar strokes, so one oar stroke does not get me very far, but you take a million tiny actions, and it really does have a big impact," says Savage. "And I think when it comes to some of the environmental issues; it is easy for people to feel that anything they do as an individual is going to be just a drop in the ocean, that it does not really make a difference."
The British ocean rower and amateur runner was born on December 23, 1967 in Cheshire. She took up rowing at University College, Oxford. While working as a management consultant and investment banker, she decided at age 34 to change her life and give up her steady income. In 2003, she became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and took part in an Anglo-American expedition that discovered Inca ruins in the Andean cloud forests near Machu Picchu. She then spent an additional three months in Peru, travelling solo and researching her first book, Three Peaks in Peru.
Roz Savage ran in the London and New York marathons and finished the Atlantic Rowing Race as the only solo female competitor in 2006. It took her 103 days to complete the crossing. A book of her Atlantic voyage "Rowing the Atlantic - Lessons Learned on the Open Ocean" was published in 2009.
She says that she was lucky to buy her boat second hand, which at the time was just a hull, a deck, and two cabins. She used the advice from experienced rowers to outfit the 23-foot vessel. A video showing the boat is available here.
After spending some time exploring Papua New Guinea, Roz Savage wants to move on to her next voyage. She plans to cross the Indian Ocean in 2011, starting in Fremantle in Western Australia.
Passing Diamond Head before arriving in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 2008 the Phil Uhl photo shows Rosalind Savage in her 23-foot boat.
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