Rowing the Atlantic : lessons learned on the open ocean

Format:

Book

Title:

Rowing the Atlantic : lessons learned on the open ocean

Author:

Savage, Roz, 1967-

ISBN:

9781416583288

Edition:

1st Simon & Schuster hardcover ed.

Publication Information:

New York : Simon & Schuster, 2009.

Physical Description:

242 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), map ; 24 cm

General Note:

Map on lining papers.

Contents:

One Unlikely Adventurer 1 -- Two Passing the Point of No Return 9 -- Three Beginnings 23 -- Four What Was I Thinking? 33 -- Five Baring My Soul-and More 43 -- Six One Stroke at a Time 59 -- Seven One Oar Down 79 -- Eight Clouds of Anxiety 97 -- Nine Life Is Easier in the Storms 109 -- Ten Happy Birthday to Me 127 -- Eleven All I Want for Christmas 133 -- Twelve Rogue Wave Rumble 141 -- Thirteen Going Garbo 155 -- Fourteen Atlantic Hardcore 161 -- Fifteen Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea 169 -- Sixteen Two Hundred Valentines 173 -- Seventeen Incommunicado 181 -- Eighteen Ships Passing in the Night 195 -- Nineteen One Hundred Days of Solitude 199 -- Twenty So Near and Yet So Far 207 -- Twenty-One Home Strait 217 -- Twenty-Two An Altered Reality 225.

Summary:

Offers an inspirational story of how one woman traded an unhappy job and marriage for a 103-day solo voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, powered only by muscle, grit, and determination, in an account by the first woman to ever row from California to Hawaii.

Personal Subject:

Savage, Roz, 1967-

Savage, Roz, 1967- (OCoLC)fst01928838

Conference Subject:

Atlantic Rowing Race -- (2005)

Atlantic Rowing Race.

Subject(s):

Rowers -- Great Britain -- Biography.

Women rowers -- Great Britain -- Biography.

Geographic Term:

Great Britain.

Genre:

Autobiographies.

Biographies.

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Salem Main Library	797.123 Savage 2009	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

STUCK IN A corporate job rut and faced with an unraveling marriage at the age of thirty-six, Roz Savage sat down one night and wrote two versions of her own obituary -- the one that she wanted and the one she was heading for. They were very different. She realized that if she carried on as she was, she wasn't going to end up with the life she wanted. So she turned her back on an eleven-year career as a management consultant to reinvent herself as a woman of adventure. She invested her life's savings in an ocean rowboat and became the first solo woman ever to enter the Atlantic Rowing Race.

Her 3,000-mile trial by sea became the challenge of a lifetime. Of the twenty-six crews that set out from La Gomera, six capsized or sank and didn't make it to the finish line in Antigua. There were times when she thought she had hit her absolute limit, but alone in the middle of the ocean, she had no choice but to find the strength to carry on.

In Rowing the Atlantic we are brought on board when Savage's dreams of feasts are nourished by yet another freeze-dried meal. When her gloves wear through to her blistered hands. When her headlamp is the only light on a pitch-black night ocean that extends indefinitely in all directions. When, one by one, all four of her oars break. When her satellite communication fails.

Stroke by stroke, Savage discovers there is so much more to life than a fancy sports car and a power-suit job. Flashing back to key moments from her life before rowing, she describes the bolt from the blue that first inspired her to row across oceans and how this crazy idea evolved from a dream into a tendinitis-inducing reality. And finally, Savage discovers in the rough waters of the Atlantic the kind of happiness we all hope to find.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Savage, a famous ocean rower and motivational speaker, was a thirty-something non-athlete when she took up the sport, having just chucked her job and left her marriage. The only solo female entrant in the grueling 2005 Atlantic Rowing Race, Savage chronicles her initial voyage with a memoir of peril and perseverance. Savage's lack of seamanship was her first major obstacle; almost immediately she developed "an ominous grinding pain in my shoulders that I knew. indicated the onset of tendonitis," and discovered that "rowing on the River Thames and rowing on the ocean were. as different as climbing the stairs and climbing Mt. Everest." Despite numerous challenges, Savage adapts and rises to the occasion, learning to handle the equipment ("less than a sixth of the way across [I was] already halfway through my supply of oars"), stay alert ("while I sleep my ears are pricked for any unfamiliar sound") and appreciate the open water: "I loved the solitude, the wildness, the beauty. But the ocean and I would have got along better if she would strop trying to get in the boat with me." Happily, this travelogue-with-lessons is minimally prescriptive, making it a great armchair adventure. (Oct.) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Review

Former British businesswoman trades career and marriage for a solitary high-seas adventure. Dedicated to "anybody who has a dream," Savage's chronicle begins in 2005 on the shores of the Canary Islands as the 38-year-old former London office worker methodically checks every detail of Sedna, her specially designed carbon-fiber rowboat, on the eve of the notoriously demanding Atlantic Rowing Race. As the contest's first solo female entrant ever, Savage assesses her qualifications as mildly inadequate, given that she was "just under five-foot-four, with an unfortunate tendency to tubbiness." However, she had prepared physically and mentally for 14 months for the two-to-four month journey across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Savage is an amiable, often humorous narrator, extolling the joys and the unforeseen pitfalls of going it alone on the open water. She shares memories of her former life as the increasingly disillusioned wife of a financial consultant, revealing the embarrassing exposure of her infidelity, and how the idea to enter the competition was born. Early in the event, Savage was plagued with doubts and uncertaintysponsorship woes, internal skepticismbut it was the physical hurdles that affected her most as the long days and nights of rowing on windswept, surging ocean waters caused painful saltwater sores (rowing naked only helped so much), hand blisters, infected boils, fingernail separation and shoulder strain. The Atlantic, she writes, was "proving be a very challenging opponent." Yet she continued undeterred while sharks and other impediments forced other contenders to stop. The author's courageous success story is a testament to self-sufficiency, even if her reflections are occasionally clichd"anything is possible, and our only limits are the ones we place on ourselves." Bold and invigorating. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

One The Unlikely Adventurer	p. 1
Two Passing the Point of No Return	p. 9
Three Beginnings	p. 23
Four What Was I Thinking?	p. 33
Five Baring My Soul-and More	p. 43
Six One Stroke at a Time	p. 59
Seven One Oar Down	p. 79
Eight Clouds of Anxiety	p. 97
Nine Life Is Easier in the Storms	p. 109
Ten Happy Birthday to Me	p. 127
Eleven All I Want for Christmas	p. 133
Twelve Rogue Wave Rumble	p. 141
Thirteen Going Garbo	p. 155
Fourteen Atlantic Hardcore	p. 161
Fifteen Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea	p. 169
Sixteen Two Hundred Valentines	p. 173
Seventeen Incommunicado	p. 181
Eighteen Ships Passing in the Night	p. 195
Nineteen One Hundred Days of Solitude	p. 199
Twenty So Near and Yet So Far	p. 207
Twenty-One The Home Strait	p. 217
Twenty-Two An Altered Reality	p. 225
Epilogue	p. 235
Acknowledgments	p. 241

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Bound With These Titles

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Summary

Summary

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Kirkus Review

Table of Contents