Rowing the ATLANTIC by Roz Savage

Author:Roz Savage
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2009-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

ten HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME

friday, December 23, 2005. My thirty-eighth birthday.

I’d hoped to have time to relax and treat myself, although treat myself to what I wasn’t quite sure. No salons, spas, or movie theaters here. But it looked as if I would be rowing, for time (and tides, and winds) waiteth for no man—or woman.

I wanted to get as far south as possible before Christmas Eve to avoid an adverse weather system—ideally down to twenty-four degrees north, but that would require me to cover a hundred miles in two days, so it seemed a tall order given that my average to date was just over twenty miles a day. This average had been severely dented by a series of days when the wind had been against me. Despite Sid’s best efforts, I had been pushed backward by headwinds on three consecutive days immediately before my birthday, logging negative mileage of minus seven, minus ten, and minus three miles. Most days I could console myself with the thought that every mile I rowed was one mile that I would never have to row again, so to find myself faced with a total of twenty miles that had to be re-rowed was demoralizing.

The wind had finally turned in my favor but was due to change again to a southwest headwind the day after my birthday. So if I was going to avoid the third consecutive Saturday night of Sid the sea anchor going out to play, I needed to get a move on and get down to twenty-four degrees of latitude as fast as I could.

As my birthday dawned the wind was behaving impeccably and blowing at ten knots from the northeast. I had been up rowing half the night, so I was hopeful of some good news when BBC Radio Solent rang for one of their regular interviews. This was the local BBC radio station for my last known address, in Emsworth, and during my race preparations, I had become a regular feature on their early morning show. We had continued to speak every couple of weeks since the race started. They always gave me an update on my race position, and I was sure it had to be good news after my overnight effort. I had been ahead of a men’s pair, Move Ahead, for a while, and had been gaining on another crew, so I hoped I might have moved up a place in the rankings to third from last. When I found out that Move Ahead had indeed moved ahead and overtaken me again I was rather crestfallen. I had moved closer to my intended latitude, but it would have been a welcome birthday present to gain a race place rather than lose one.

Radio Solent was having a Christmas party in the breakfast studio and the assembled throng gave a fine rendition of “Happy Birthday” that restored my spirits, as did various birthday greetings sent by email via my website and relayed by Mum.

After that it was down to rowing business as usual, with a special guest appearance that afternoon by a whale.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.