TED Talks; Roz Savage: Why I'm rowing across the Pacific

Rating****

Roz Savage craves adventure in her life. She does not want to settle for the business styled life, she would rather be tested and pushed outside her comfort zones to accomplish what others think is not realistic. She tests her self confidence along with her her mental and physical strength and decides she wants to row across oceans.


Roz worked in an office in London, not happy with her job, she decided she needed a new direction in life. She sat herself down and looked at the life she wanted to have, and the life she was headed towards having, and came to the conclusion she deserved to fulfill her craving for adventure.


In 2005 she was the first women to finish the Atlantic rowing race solo. She set out from the Canary Islands with 3,000 miles of empty ocean ahead of her. Roz fought storms that broke every one of her oars before she had reached halfway, she managed to go through multiple reconstructions of the oars before she finally finished her first major adventure after 103 days alone on the ocean. Also the remaining 24 days she rowed without her phone to blog about her daily life, being completely cut off from society.


After this amazing experience she asked herself the question "well what do I do now?"
Of course this question was easily answered by row a different location, leading to her row across the Pacific ocean. She tried this in 2007 but failed when she blogged about the terrible waves and storms and found herself being rescued by the coast guard. She later explains that being lifted into the helicopter was one of the most devastating feelings she has ever experienced.
Her row across the Pacific ocean was tried once again in 2010 having a lot more success than the first attempt. She broke the adventure up into 3 parts covering 3 different parts of the ocean to get across. The first part was from San Fransisco to Hawaii, the second was from Hawaii to Kiribati and the final part being Kiribati to Papua New Guinea. This means she will have rowed over 8000 miles by herself making her the first women to row solo across the Pacific ocean. After completing all three of these stages on April 19th 2010 she was giving this title and holds it proudly.

I chose this TED talk because as a girl, I think it is important that it isn't only male figures that are idolized as athletes and people who can achieve greatness with adventure. I would recommend this TED talk to anyone, it is inspiring and emotional, and it makes you think about what people are capable of.

REFERENCES
TED Talks; Roz Savage: Why I'm rowing across the Pacific ; Mission Blue Voyage, Filmed Apr. 2010, Posted Apr. 2010 ; TED CONFERENCES LLC
http://www.rozsavage.com/adventure/ ; Across the Atlantic: 2005-6 ; Across the Pacific 2008-2010