Watermakers broken
2
Weight lost
15lbs
audiobooks read
62
Strokes rowed
Wave power
Making a difference
1,000,000
2
IC
RO W
(ST AG E
ONE )
15lbs
IF AC :P G LO N’S TAI CAP
a fed-up office worker who transformed herself into an 62 ocean-going eco-crusader aims to be the first woman to row solo across the pacific By a m a r pat e l
How far do you want to go in life? It’s a question disillusioned British management consultant Roz Savage asked herself in 2004. The answer came when she wrote two different versions of her obituary. One was a tribute to the life she wanted; the other reflected the life she had. ‘They were so different,’ Savage, 41, tells Lexus from Hawaii. ‘I realised that if I didn’t change, I wasn’t going to end up where I wanted to be.’ Having rowed competitively while at Oxford University, Savage decided to take up the oars again, although this time her course was slightly more ambitious: she would row 4,800 kilometres, solo, across the Atlantic Ocean. Twelve months later, she left her London home and set out from the Canary Islands in her 7.3-metre boat, the Brocade. After battling six-metre waves for more than half the journey, she finally arrived in Antigua 103 days later. The voyage was more than a triumph over adversity: what Savage witnessed at sea transformed her from passive armchair observer to fearless environmental campaigner. ‘On calm days I could see a thin suspension of plastic near the water’s surface,’ she recalls. ‘These tiny pieces build up in the food chain and bleach out nasty chemicals that disrupt our hormonal systems.’ Inspired to do something, in 2008 Savage rowed from California to Hawaii, blogging all the way to publicise the damage plastic causes to marine ecosystems. ‘I simply want people to be more aware of the consequences of their choices as consumers,’ she says. The 99-day ys, w - 103 da 5 hours, 43 m c ro inu nti tes a l at
voyage was also the opening leg in Savage’s quest to be the first woman1,000,000 to row solo across the Pacific, after she was forced to abort an earlier attempt 10 days in due to bad weather. If all goes to plan, by the time you read this she will have just completed the second stage, from Hawaii to the Polynesian island of Tuvalu. Just as rowing one stroke at a time builds to 10,000 strokes a day, Savage believes that doing even the smallest things, en masse and often, can lead to big changes. ‘Carrying reusable grocery bags and coffee mugs, living locally and growing your own vegetables and eating from low on the food chain to reduce your food’s carbon footprint, it all makes a difference.’ In December Savage will switch from ocean rower to longdistance walker to walk from London to the COP15 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, in her awarenessraising role as a UN Climate Hero. ‘I often receive emails from people who say they weren’t aware of the extent of problems like plastic pollution,’ she says. ‘At first they were merely interested in overcoming failure or loved reading my blog. But soon, people began saying how they’d changed their lifestyle. If we can create those ripples we can create a culture where sustainability is inherently the right thing to do.’ Rowing the Atlantic: Lessons Learned on the Open Ocean by Roz Savage is available from Simon & Schuster. rozsavage.com
owing to date - 2,3 39.6 ent r ho e sp ur tim s
TAGE ONE) - 99 ROW (S day IFIC s, 8 ho PAC ur s, 5 5
mi nu te s
2008
Photography: © roz savage, istock
2005
| i l lu s t r at i o n by p e t e o s b o u r n e
LEXUS MAGAZINE 15 LEXUS MAGAZINE 15