5 Minutes of Adventure: Rowing with Roz

November 12th, 2013 • BY

Need a 5-minute, adventure-infused respite from the workday? We’re here to help. With this new WomensMovement.com feature, 5 Minutes of Adventure, we’ll whisk you off to a faraway place where adventure awaits.

For the first installment, we celebrate ocean rower/environmentalist Roz Savage‘s new book, Stop Drifting; Start Rowing: One Woman’s Search for Happiness and Meaning Alone on the Pacific. In case you didn’t catch our recent interviews with Roz here and here, this National Geographic Adventurer of the Year 2010 holds four world records, including being the first woman to solo row three oceans—the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian Ocean.

Today is a fitting celebration as Roz received her MBE, an British honor bestowed for a particular achievement, today from Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. Here, an excerpt from her book hand-selected by Roz for WomensMovement.com readers:

It was unbearably hot in my cabin, so one night I decided to try sleeping out on deck. It might not be long before the next squall came along to drench me, but it was worth a try. I took my sleeping bag and dragged it out to the cockpit, making it into a cozy nest between the runners of my rowing seat. I snuggled in and lay there, gazing up at the stars.

As my boat rocked gently on the waves, I found myself suddenly marvelling at the strangeness and splendour of my life. It was as if I rose up outside myself for a moment and looked down at this little naked woman lying on the deck of her small silver boat, completely alone in the vast darkness of the ocean.

Who would have thought, ten years previously when I was still working in an office in London, doing a job I didn’t like to buy stuff I didn’t need, that one day I would find myself here, in the middle of the Pacific, well on my way to becoming the first woman to row across the world’s largest ocean? There had been some scary moments over the years that had tested me almost beyond my limits, but they had also helped me become stronger, to form a character that could withstand the vicissitudes of life—not just on the ocean, but on dry land too. I thought back to that unhappy, underachieving management consultant who had dragged herself into the office every day because she thought she had no choice. I was immensely happy that I had reached that fork in the road, and that I had chosen the road—or ocean—less traveled.

I snuggled in deeper, and marveled at the beauty above me. So far from the nearest light pollution, the stars sparkled across the night sky like a jewel-encrusted cape. The Milky Way swooped diagonally across the heavens, reminding me of my utter insignificance, and at the same time my complete interconnection with everything. I was just a tiny speck of consciousness, and yet I was consciousness itself, omnipresent and omnipotent. I was suddenly overcome with a profound sense of joy—which lasted until the clouds blotted out the stars, a squall blew in, and I beat a hasty retreat to the shelter of the cabin.

Photo: All rights reserved by Roz Savage

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