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SAN FRANCISCO - A British woman who attempted to row across the Pacific Ocean alone has been rescued after her boat capsized several times amid high waves and gale-force winds, she said.
Roz Savage set off from California on Aug. 12 seeking to become the first woman to row alone across the Pacific to highlight the problem of plastic pollution in the ocean. A US Coast Guard helicopter picked her up about 145 km off shore on Thursday night.
"I never thought I was going to die; I never felt that my life was in danger," Savage told Reuters in an interview after she returned to land in California.
"... What made the rescue my best course of option was I was still in range of land and I was only 10 days into the expedition."
The former management consultant suffered some bruises and cuts when the strong waves capsized her boat several times and an anchor designed to face the specially designed vessel into waves was lost. Restraining straps had also broken.
"My instinct was really to tough it out," she said by telephone. "The ultimate decision was mine, but I could tell (the Coast Guard) were very concerned, and looking at it objectively I would see the reasons for their concerns."
"If I ran into storms later on and didn't have the sea anchor, didn't have the restraining straps on the bunk - if I had the option to remedy those problems I think I would have regretted it later on."
A Coast Guard plane flew above her earlier on Thursday but Savage said she was initially reluctant to end the journey in conversations she had with officials via a satellite phone.
"It was like the feeling of being called into the headmaster's office," she said about the Coast Guard recommendation that she return to shore.
Savage, 39, took up rowing while studying at Oxford and was hooked. She spent about eight to 11 hours a day rowing since starting the Pacific expedition this month, she said.
Her carbon fiber boat is 7m long and 1.8m wide with cabins in the front and back and a rowing position in the centre.
Savage hopes to rejoin her boat - which is now floating alone at sea - within a few days armed with new supplies including a new anchor, ready to resume her journey.
Mother Nature "might have won this round, but hopefully not the fight," she told Reuters.
And why fight at all? "I won't say I love it out there, it's definitely a tough environment," she said. "This is just what I do."
Savage planned to reach Hawaii by mid-October, the first leg of a three-stage journey to Australia.
- REUTERS
