By Laurie McAndish King

UPDATE 5/9/12: Roz is about to set out to row from Newfoundland to London with Andrew Morris, 2587 miles in 60 days, to land in time for the 2012  Olympics.  We wish you well, Roz!

UPDATE 3/3/12: Roz has just announced she will be rowing the North Atlantic to land in time for the Olympics in London.

TWITTER: @rozsavage

Adventurer and environmentalist Roz Savage is the first woman to row across the “Big Three” oceans: the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian. Even more impressive, she did it solo, in a 23-foot rowboat, without a support vessel.

“I have battled twenty-foot waves, sleep deprivation, self-doubt and depression, but I have never been happier.” Roz Savage

I interviewed Roz back in 2007 when she was launching her Pacific passage, and learned how she’d transformed herself from an ordinary office worker into a world-class ocean-rowing athlete. She’s accomplished quite a lot since then, having rowed more than 15,000 miles and spent nearly a year and a half of her life at sea.

Arriving Mauritrius after rowing Indian Ocean/Photo: Colin Leondardt-10/3/11

And she has the credentials to prove it. Roz now holds four world records for ocean rowing, and in 2010 was named Adventurer of the Year by the National Geographic Society. She was recently invited by the Queen’s royal command to a reception at Buckingham Palace.

I was thrilled to catch up with Roz recently at a coffee shop in San Francisco, just after she had set her new record by completing the last of her three ocean rows, the Indian Ocean crossing… [Read more...]