Late last year, I wrote about Katie Spotz, a 22 year old who is attempting to become the first woman to row a non-motorized boat across the Atlantic Ocean by herself.  She is undertaking this challenge not for personal glory – something to which she is entitled following an accomplishment like this – but to raise awareness and money for Blue Planet Run.  This is a non-profit organization which brings clean drinking water to remote villages throughout the underdeveloped world.  The lack of clean water is the primary cause of premature death in much of the world, and Blue Planet Run has alleviated that problem for hundreds of thousands of people in 18 countries.  Thus far, Katie Spotz’s voyage across the Atlantic has resulted in donations of over $50,000, enough money to bring safe drinking water to well over 1000 people.

Katie left the city of Dakar, Senegal, on January 3.  It has now been 63 days, and she is nearing her goal.  Originally, she had planned to finish her voyage in Cayenne, French Guiana.  However, the coast of French Guiana is prone to extremely rough seas.  In a small row boat like Katie’s, it could be potentially life-threatening to attempt reaching Cayenne in anything other than extremely calm weather.  With winds near the coast reaching over 20 knots, Katie has decided to extend her trip another 400 miles, and she is now shooting for Georgetown, Guyana. 

It has been a grueling, but otherwise relatively uneventful passage across the Atlantic.  Katie has been fortunate in that the weather has cooperated for the most part.  There have been some interesting moments, though.  A few weeks after leaving Senegal, she spent two terrifying hours being trailed by eight large sharks.  Even if they were more curious than hungry, just imagine what your own thoughts would be after several solitary hours looking at this:

Another time she woke up to find a Portuguese man-o-war stranded on the side of the boat. Although she had slept through it, high waves had washed this poisonous relative of the jelly fish on board during the night.  Even when dead, its long tentacles would still be hazardous, so it must have been a delicate operation to dislodge it from her boat.

For someone rowing a small boat with a very low profile, jelly fish and sharks are not the biggest hazard, however.  Far more dangerous – and likely – is the potential for catastrophe from being rammed by a large ocean vessel.  That is especially true closer to shore.  Yesterday, as she made her way through seven foot seas, she caught a glimpse of this tanker not too far away.  You can imagine that she is much less visible to the tanker than the tanker is to her.

In her own blog posts (she is connected to the Internet via a satellite telephone), Katie has admitted that it is easy to be lulled into a false sense of security after spending days and days and weeks and weeks in mostly calm weather and quiet seas.  The Atlantic, however, is a fickle friend, and can fatally turn on you at a moment’s notice. 

Pictured above in the foreground is the bow of the SV Concordia, a 188 ft. sailing ship that gives tourists a small taste of what sea life would have been like more than a hundred years ago when sailors relied on the wind to propel their ships.  The Concordia was docked at the port of Dakar just as Katie began her trans-Atlantic journey.  Hers is the small yellow boat just beyond the Concordia.  You may remember hearing about the Concordia a few weeks ago.  This is the same ship that capsized during an intense storm off the coast of Brazil on February 17.  Although all 40 of her passengers were safely rescued, Concordia herself now lies on the bottom of the Atlantic.  I suspect the thought, “There but for the grace of God go I” has crossed Katie’s mind more than once in the past two months.

Katie’s journey is now nearing its end.  Each of the past few mornings she has been entertained by avian guests whose presence offers proof that the coast is nearby, just out of sight.  In about a week, Katie will row ashore in Georgetown.  She will have earned a place in the annals of human endurance and athletic achievement.  More than that, however, she will have saved human lives in small villages far away, where families will have access to clean drinking water for the first time.  They may not know Katie Spotz’s name, but they will be grateful for what her accomplishment has done for them.