Rowing the Atlantic: Lessons Learned on the Open Ocean »

A latecomer to the life of adventure, Roz Savage was previously a management consultant and investment banker, before realizing at the age of thirty-four that there might be more to life than a steady income and a house in the suburbs. In 2005, she was the only solo female competitor in the Atlantic Rowing Race, the first solo woman ever to compete in that race and the sixth woman to row an ocean solo.

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.

Publishers Weekly

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.
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