Rowing across the Atlantic – Wow!

While she may not be a vagabond in terms of being a person who moves from place to place with no visible means of income, I find that more important is the spirit of adventure that vagobonds tend to share. I wish I had had the drive or courage to do something like this when I was 17, instead, I simply joined the Marines on the eve of the first Gulf War and thankfully never had to see any combat.

A young American adventurer, 17-year-old Katie Spotz, has started rowing across the Atlantic Ocean in a solo effort to raise $30,000 for Blue Planet Run and give clean water to 1,000 people in developing nations. The young sailor pushed off from Senegal yesterday and hopes to make the 2,500-mile journey in just over 100 days.The map above shows her progress up until now (updated every 20 minutes on her twitter page by Google Earth).

Spotz be the youngest person to row an ocean solo and the first American to row from the mainland of Africa to the mainland of South America if she completes the trip. She is eqipped with solar-powered electronics such as a water desalination machine, a GPS unit, radios, a satellite phone (for texting and updating her Twitter feed), and a laptop for updating her blog. The food and equipment take her 440-pound boat to approximately 1,000 pounds. She is living off freeze-dried food, trail mix, energy bars, and other high-energy, low-weight food.

Spotz warmed up for the adventure by swimming the entire length of the Allegheny River to raise awareness of the problem of lack of clean drinking water around the world. Apparently, though, she has only been rowing for two years and was “the slow kid on her high school swim team.” However, she has run marathons, ultramarathons and bicycled across the US.