My Mushings

After rowing over 4,000 miles of pirate-infested ocean Roz only has 16.9 nautical miles to row! Roz Savage will soon arrive in Grand Baie, Mauritius on the 4th of October, 2011 at Sunrise becoming the First Woman to Row Solo across the “Big Three” Oceans of the World: the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.

A former management consultant and investment banker, Rosalind ‘Roz’ Savage gave it all up to pursue her dream – to find freedom and meaning by crossing the world’s oceans.
After writing sample obituaries of the life she was living and the one she really wanted, Roz re-ignited her passion for rowing – something she had done as a college student in Oxford – and took to the blue. In March of 2006 she successfully rowed across the Atlantic, taking 103 days and becoming only the 5th woman to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean from East to West. Roz has the world record in sight, but is well aware that ‘it’s not over til it’s over’. Two out of the last 3 crews to attempt landing in Mauritius have been shipwrecked on the reef.

When Roz set out to row the Atlantic, they said, “She isn’t tall enough or strong enough to row an ocean.” But at last, after rowing 15,000 miles, taking over 5 million oar strokes, and spending over 500 days at sea, Roz Savage is about to accomplish her goal. What motivates Roz Savage to row the oceans? It is her mission to show that each one of us has a role in fostering environmental sustainability and creating our collective future.
Roz visited Manila and El Nido in the Philippines in August of 2010 and met with top executives and donors of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) to speak of the dangers of climate change on oceans and marine ecosystems. Her inspiring words resonated with the WWF gathering: “Follow your dreams and take things one (oar) stroke at a time!”

Colin Leonhardt provided an aerial video of Roz Savage as she departed on the Indian Ocean from Australia. On April 21st Roz was questioning her career options. She wrote, “Surely there have to be easier ways to spread the good green word. By 9pm my boat had been knocked down twice already, big waves had knocked her over to an angle of greater than 90 degrees. Imagine someone abruptly rotating your bedroom through 90 degrees. It’s not that much fun. On the second knockdown a torrent of water came gushing into the cabin through one of the ventilation holes, which I had pressed into service as an outlet for my satphone antenna cable so I could put a patch antenna on the cabin roof. Clearly I was going to have to remove the antenna so I could close the ventilation hole. But getting out of my bunk and going out into the wild night was about as appealing as root canal surgery. Taking my knife between my teeth in time-honoured fashion, I reluctantly ventured out onto the darkness of the deck. It was wild out there – blowing a gale, boat pitching, water flying everywhere. I velcro’d on the ankle leash for safety and turned back to the cabin roof to cut down the antenna. But something else caught my eye – one of my spare oars was flapping uselessly, the spoon broken right across, hanging on only by a few wood fibres…”

Roz (age 43) freely admits to being an unlikely adventurer. She is only 5’4?, and was already in her late thirties by the time she started ocean rowing, having spent the first eleven years of her adult life working as a management consultant in London. Her life changed when she wrote two versions of her own obituary – the one she wanted and the one she was heading for – and realized she wasn’t on track for the kind of life that would leave a worthwhile legacy. She turned her back on her materialistic lifestyle and reinvented herself as an adventurer, using her ocean voyages to raise awareness and inspire action on environmental issues.

My question to her is what if she needs medical attention? Does she have a crew of Doctor or Nurses with medical scrubs. How long does she have to wait does she have to finish one leg or does she have a back up crew sailing with her?

“On the ocean, it’s clear that I have to keep showing up day after day and sticking my oars in the water if I want to get to where I’m going. It’s the same with any big challenge, including the environment. We all have to start living more sustainably, and keep up those good habits day after day, if we are to correct our course for a cleaner, greener, brighter future.”

Roz Savage is a United Nations Climate Hero and an Athlete Ambassador for 350.org. She is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, an International Fellow of the Explorers’ Club of New York (ditto link), and has been listed amongst the Top Twenty Great British Adventurers by the Daily Telegraph (ditto link it). In 2010 she was named Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic .

Her inspirational book, “Rowing the Atlantic: Lessons Learned on the Open Ocean”, is published by Simon & Schuster. The eponymous documentary has been screened around the world in association with the Banff Mountain Film Festival.