By the time Roz Savage reached the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on her 3,000-mile quest to row across it alone, all four of her oars had broken. Adrift in her 23-foot-long boat, she thought quickly. Using duct tape, she splinted the oars and a wheel axle that she hack-sawed off of a spare rowing seat. The fix got her through the grueling 103-day journey that only six other women have ever completed solo. By the end of the trek she had lost 30 pounds, missed her birthday and Christmas, got tendinitis in her shoulders and had gone nearly a month without talking to another living soul after her satellite phone broke.
Thirteen months later, those trials can't dissuade the 39-year-old from another extreme journey that will give her an even greater distinction: The first woman to cross the Pacific Ocean alone. Savage, who is living in Woodside while she trains for the 7,600-mile adventure, will launch her craft from the San Francisco Bay shore in July. She will spend more than six months at sea, navigating the vast body of water with a GPS tracking device and stopping in Hawaii and a South Pacific island before landing in Australia. Only two other women have rowed across the Pacific, both with men: Sylvia Cook in 1972 and Kathleen Saville in 1984, according to the International Ocean Rowing Society's Web site. Five male rowers have made the solo voyage between 1983 and 2005. Fewer than 300 people have ever rowed across an ocean. Read on.
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