Roz Savage

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Rosalind (Roz) Savage
Born December 23, 1967 (1967-12-23) (age 42)
Cheshire, England
Website
rozsavage.com

Rosalind (Roz) Savage is a British ocean rower and amateur runner, now pursuing a career as an environmental advocate, writer and motivational speaker.[1]

Contents

[edit] Background

Savage was born on December 23, 1967 in Cheshire. She took up rowing at University College, Oxford, and went on to gain two half-blues for representing Oxford against Cambridge, and to win blades with the Univ Women's 1st VIII in 1988 and 1989.[2]

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 cloudforests near Machu Picchu. She then spent a further three months in Peru, travelling solo and researching her first book, Three Peaks in Peru.[3]

She ran in the London and New York marathons, finishing in the top 2% for women in each, and has run a personal best of 3 hours 19 minutes.[4][5]

She was previously a management consultant (Accenture and CHP) and investment banker (UBS), before realising at the age of 34 that there might be more to life than a steady income and a house in the suburbs.[6]

Her story was filmed as A Little Silver Boat in a Big Silver Sea as part of the ITV1 documentary television series Is It Worth It? first broadcast on Monday March 12 2007 in the UK.[7]

[edit] Ocean Rows

[edit] The Atlantic

On March 14, 2006 she completed the first leg by finishing the Atlantic Rowing Race as the only solo female competitor, taking 103 days to complete the crossing. This she did unsupported, despite breaking all four of her oars and having to row with patched-up oars for more than half the race. Her cooking stove failed after only 20 days, then her navigation equipment and music player. She managed to maintain her daily weblog right up until day 80 when her satellite phone failed, leaving only the movement detected by her positional transponder to indicate that she was still alive.[8]

Despite all this, and the danger of having to cut off the rope to her failed sea anchor in 20-foot (6.1 m) waves, she arrived safely at the finish in Antigua. She is only the 5th woman to row solo across the Atlantic from East to West.

Roz's book of her Atlantic voyage Rowing the Atlantic - Lessons Learned on the Open Ocean will be published on October 6, 2009 by Simon & Schuster. [9] [10]

[edit] The Pacific

Shortly after her successful Atlantic crossing, she announced her bid to become the first woman to row solo across the Pacific Ocean from the US to Australia. (Maud Fontenoy rowed solo across the Pacific in 2005, via a different route.) Her intention is to complete it in 3 stages, starting from California in Summer 2008, and breaking her journey in Hawaii and Tuvalu.[11][12]

She began stage one on May 25, 2008[13] and arrived in Hawaii on September 1, 2008, becoming the first woman to row solo from California to Hawaii. She completed the crossing from San Francisco to Waikiki in a time of 99 days 8 hours and 55 minutes. The total distance covered was 2,598 nautical miles (4,811 km) and took approximately one million oar strokes.[14] [15] En route to Hawaii, with no other vessels near, Savage was given an essential resupply of water by the two man crew of the JUNK raft, also on a journey from California to Hawaii.[16]

She began stage two on May 24, 2009, with intentions to arrive at the island nation of Tuvalu 2580 miles away. On August 28, after suffering adverse winds and currents for several days, with food supplies running low and her water-maker broken, Roz realised that she was unlikely to be able to reach Tuvalu and reluctantly changed course for Tarawa. She finally arrived in Tarawa on September 5 after 104 days at sea and approximately 1.3 million oar strokes.[17]

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Congratulations to Roz Savage". Professional Photographer. 2008-09-02. http://www.ppmag.com/web-exclusives/2008/09/congratulations-to-roz-savage-1.html. Retrieved 2009-01-05. 
  2. ^ http://www.ouwlrc.org.uk/Crews/crew89.htm
  3. ^ http://weboptimisernews.com/blog/?m=2499
  4. ^ http://results.london-marathon.co.uk/2001/list.php
  5. ^ http://www.nyrrc.org/cgi-bin/htmlos.cgi/5772.2.010754689316226790
  6. ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/oct/28/sailing.features
  7. ^ 'Pull of the ocean', Yorkshire Evening Post, 9 March 2007
  8. ^ http://www.theblueproject.org/267
  9. ^ http://books.simonandschuster.com/Rowing-the-Atlantic/Roz-Savage/9781416583288
  10. ^ http://www.amazon.com/Rowing-Atlantic-Lessons-Learned-Ocean/dp/1416583289/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253239768&sr=8-1-catcorr
  11. ^ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1976465/Roz-Savage-in-solo-row-bid-over-Pacific.html
  12. ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/oct/28/sailing.features
  13. ^ http://twitter.com/rozsavage/statuses/819512465
  14. ^ http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/01/BA3412MG2A.DTL
  15. ^ http://www.oceanrowing.com/statistics/index.htm
  16. ^ "Mid-ocean dinner date saves rower". BBC News. 2008-08-20. Archived from the original on 2009-09-30. http://www.webcitation.org/5kBAnV1JI. Retrieved 2009-09-30. 
  17. ^ http://www.fox8.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-as-australia-pacific-rower,0,5689487.story

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links

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