Young Cleveland Area Woman Will Row Solo Across Atlantic Ocean to Promote Safe Drinking Water
One Woman. One Ocean. One Dream. Katie Spotz onboard her ocean rowboat, Liv, which will be her new home for the 100-day voyage across the Atlantic from Africa to South America.
Endurance athlete Katie Spotz is training for her biggest challenge to date—becoming the youngest person to row solo across an ocean and the first American to row solo from Africa to South America. Spotz, 21, of Mentor, Ohio, near Cleveland, plans to use her unique aspiration to raise funds and awareness for the Blue Planet Run Foundation, a charitable organization that helps communities gain access to safe drinking water.
The idea to row across the Atlantic Ocean came to Spotz while chatting with someone on a bus in Australia. “During the conversation, the person (who is now a good friend) mentioned that his friend rowed across the Atlantic Ocean twice,” she said. “I was instantly intrigued. Not long after that conversation, I was researching ocean rowing and the more I learned, the more I realized that is something I would like to pursue.”
Spotz plans to leave West Africa in mid-December and remain at sea from 70 to 100 days and travel 2,500 miles from Dakar, Senegal to Cayenne, French Guiana. Her 400-pound boat will be equipped with many safety measures, including a GPS tracking device, emergency beacons, water-maker, satellite phone and more. Spotz is spending her days in Ohio working on three areas—physical, mental and ocean training. She is mixing high intensity cardio workouts with weight lifting and weekly long rows on the erg machine, and uses meditation as a form of mental preparation. Her boat is docked at the Mentor Harbor Yachting Club and she is training on Lake Erie through October, when the boat will be shipped to Africa.
“I love challenges, especially challenges where you push your mind over matter,” she said. “One reason I am particularly interested in ocean rowing is because it becomes a way of life. When you compete in most endurance events, you complete the event and then go back to all the comforts of home. I want a raw, inescapable challenge.”
Children gathered around a reconstructed well in Ahmadiyya
Primary School Malaisoko, Port Loko District, Sierra Leone.
Spotz is no stranger to challenges. In 2006, Spotz completed a 3,300-mile bike ride across America for the American Lung Association. In 2007, she went to Australia for a 62-mile ultra-marathon. And last year, she became the first person to swim the entire length of the 352-mile Allegheny River to increase awareness of the need for safe drinking water. In November 2008, Spotz also completed a 150-mile run in the Mojave and Colorado desert.
Mentor, Ohio resident, Katie Spotz, will row Across the Atlantic
Ocean to raise awareness for safe drinking water.
The Blue Planet Run is a San Francisco based non-profit funding safe drinking water projects for the billion people around the world in need. Unsafe drinking water is the world’s leading cause of sickness and disease, but this crisis is considered solvable. For $30 a contributor can give someone a lifetime of safe drinking water. Working with its 47 expert water group partners around the world in its online network, Blue Planet Run said it can deliver sustainable safe drinking water projects for less than traditionally possible. Since 2002, Blue Planet Run has enabled 214 projects in 18 countries, bringing safe drinking water to well over 200,000 people.
For more information, visit www.blueplanetrun.org.
For more information on Spotz’s trans-Atlantic solo row or to attend one of her upcoming fundraisers, visit www.rowforwater.com.