Atlantic Crossing
In 1983, Rosie Swale sailed solo across the Atlantic in a small 17-foot (5.2 m) foot cutter, which she had found in a cowshed in Wales and named Fiesta Girl. Aiming to be the fourth woman to sail alone to America in a small boat from England (the first being Ann Davison in 1952-1953, followed by Nicolette Milnes-Walker in 1972 and Clare Francis in 1973), she also wanted to raise funds for a CAT Scanner for the Royal Marsden Hospital in London. Divorced from Colin Swale, Rosie also found her second husband, sailor and photographer Clive Pope, during the preparations for the trip, when he rigged the boat for her.
Departing from Pembroke in Wales on 13 July 1983, she sailed to the Azores and Caribbean Islands. Simply equipped, Rosie navigated by the stars and was nearly run down by an oil tanker. When she was 100 miles (160 km) north of Puerto Rico, she was becalmed for so long she was without food and water for five days and nearly drowned when she was swept overboard in storms. She arrived at Staten Island, New York, after completing her record-breaking 4,800 miles (7,720 km) in 70 days - navigating by the stars with the aid of her Timex watch.
Read more about this topic: Rosie Swale-Pope
Famous quotes containing the words atlantic and/or crossing:
“She had exactly the German way: whatever was in her mind to be delivered, whether a mere remark, or a sermon, or a cyclopedia, or the history of a war, she would get it into a single sentence or die. Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of the Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)