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Overview
Just out of college, newly wed, and set up with her husband Curt in a small town in New York, Kathleen Saville quickly realized that an ordinary life working for a better used car and a home with a mortgage would never satisfy her thirst for freedom and adventure. The year before, she and Curt had retraced Henry David Thoreau's canoe journey through the Maine Woods, and both were veteran rowers. Inspired, she suggested that they row across the Atlantic Ocean. Returning to her hometown, living on a shoestring, they built their own twenty-five-foot ocean rowboat. They set out from Morocco and, tested by adverse currents, gales, and their own inexperience, accomplished the near impossible.
Three years later, while they attempted to row across the Pacific, Curt was washed overboard and lost their sextant—their only means of navigation. Now, besides confronting fatigue, storms, sharks, and deadly reefs, they had to find a way to avoid becoming lost at sea and succumbing to starvation. Their ordeal in completing their crossing exposed the fissures in their marriage, and in this and subsequent adventures, Kathleen was forced to confront the difference between courage and foolhardiness. Cinematic, suspenseful, heartbreaking, and ultimately triumphant, her story of an unraveling marriage is also the account of finding her true self amid the life-and-death challenges at sea.
“It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone.”—Henry David Thoreau
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781628726893 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Arcade |
| Publication date: | 01/17/2017 |
| Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 368 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Joining the Team
Fall 1974
I was a freshman with two papers to write and a hundred pages of reading waiting for me in my dorm room. I ate my cafeteria dinner as slowly as I could, putting off the moment when I'd have to go back and start working. I wondered if my roommate, a senior with a full-time boyfriend, would be around this weekend.
I took one final bite of my Swedish meatballs, scooped up the rest of the rice, and drank the last drops of milk. I was restless. What I really wanted to do was catch a ride to Providence so I could spend the weekend at home. I was lonely for familiar faces and for my parents' company. Most of the students at the University of Rhode Island regularly returned home on the weekends, leaving the campus virtually deserted. The thought made me sad with homesickness.
I pushed open the exit door to the cafeteria and started down the stairs. That's when I saw the poster:
Wanted: Rowers for the Women's Crew Team Join Us Tonight at 7 Pm Student Union
I didn't know anything about crew or what one did on a crew team, but the directness of the message grabbed my attention. I imagined it might include traveling by boat somewhere, maybe on the nearby Narragansett Bay. The idea of rowing sounded kind of sexy and a good way to meet guys. I looked at my watch: it was 6:30. I decided to check it out.
Three days later, I waited in my dorm room for Jess, a senior on the women's crew. I was wearing what I considered appropriate workout clothes for rowing: red hot pants, an orange-red stretchy knit top, a zip-up sweat jacket, and a pair of sandals. I stubbed out my cigarette when the knock came.
In the back of a truck owned by one of the experienced men's rowers were the other new recruits, including my friend Marion who was dressed in gray sweatpants, a blue pullover, and Adidas sneakers. Marion had been a field hockey player on her high school team in West Hartford, Connecticut. Maybe she knew something I didn't know about crew.
The wooden dock, attached to the banks of the Narrow River, rocked gently with the weight of new and returning crew members. I stood with Marion and the other women on the grassy riverbank and watched the men's crews carrying their rowing shells past us. I shoved my hands deep into the pockets of my sweat jacket. It was cold, and my legs were as red as the tip of my nose. Almost as red as my shorts.
Jon Beamer, the coach, stood at the far end of the dock, giving a pep talk to a group of new male recruits. He leaned toward them, eyes wide, voice loud. Each freshman stared back, intimidated. But he was connecting with them, and they were ready to do whatever he wanted so they could be part of his crew team. Jon, a recent graduate of an Ivy League university, had rowed lightweight for the varsity men's crew. His private university pedigree was an odd fit with our state school, and our University of Rhode Island crew did not have the history or the impressive funding of his former team. Every boat that the URI crew rowed and every piece of equipment it used was purchased only after arduous fund-raising by each dedicated crew member. Unlike the URI football team, which had a million-dollar budget, the crew subsisted on minor contributions from the athletic department.
I learned pretty quickly that day that whatever equipment the crew had was doled out according to gender. The men's crews rowed the lighter and newer boats. Their oars were also lighter and less beat-up than the women's. With a push on the boat and oars, Jon sent the new rowers and returning rowers off in the lightweight Schoenbroad. He turned back to glare at our little women's group, huddled between the riverbank and dock.
"Sue, send them up there to get the Pocock. Get the oars and shell down here."
Sue, the women's captain, and Jess, the senior, gathered all the new women and led us up the boathouse hill, its side gouged out with railroad ties for stairs. It took care not to trip on those steps. In the boathouse, Sue led us over to a huge, wooden eight-person rowing boat. Its outriggers were chipped, blue-painted steel piping with bubbly welded joints, an indication that it had been repaired many times. The boat looked enormously heavy.
"The Pocock used to be the men's, but it's our boat now," Sue explained. "It's heavy, but it's one of the best. If you get used to rowing this boat, you'll be able to row anything." We all nodded, though we didn't have a clue what she was talking about. I don't think any of the new recruits had ever rowed before, never mind seen a barge like this Pocock. Images of Roman galley slaves came to mind, heaving at their oars while a brute of a slave driver flicked a whip about their shoulders.
"First, you need your oars." I tore my eyes from the boat. "Pick out an oar and bring it down to the dock and come back."
I chose the smoothest-looking sweep oar and tried to pull it out of the storage bay with one hand, but it was too heavy and its twelve-foot length made the balance extremely awkward. For the first and last time in my rowing career, I carried my eight-and-a-half-pound oar down to the water with two hands. Some of the men's crew who hadn't gone out with the first men's boat, egged on by Jon, thought it was hilarious to moo like cows as the women walked by with their oars. Eventually, like the experienced women rowers, I learned to carry my oars and our boats with no expression on my face. If any woman ever gave the slightest indication of how heavy the boat was, the men would be right on us, mooing and catcalling.
Back in the boathouse, ten of us lined up on one side of the Pocock and pulled it halfway out. At Sue's command, Marion and her group ducked under and stood up on the other side. Then, at the next command, we lifted the 61-foot, 285-pound boat to our shoulders. Again at Sue's command, we marched forward, some of the new people staggering under the weight of the boat, the gunwales digging into their shoulders. It was hard to believe that we weren't going to fall down the hill with the Pocock crushing us to the ground. As we began our descent, the experienced rowers gripped the gunwales harder while the new women cringed under the boat's weight. Just when the boat began to dip precariously toward the ground, a loud voice boomed out, "If you're going to fall down, make sure your body is under that boat. I say again, make sure your body is under that boat! That boat is worth more to me than you are."
That was Jon, of course, who was waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs. I straightened my legs and climbed downward, stepping carefully over the railroad ties. At the dock, Sue told us to push the boat up and over our heads while grabbing for the footrests in the center, all in one fluid motion. The boat plopped into the water, with the new people letting go at the last second when the boat's weight was the heaviest.
"Hold on to that boat and don't let it go!" Jon again. I didn't recall hearing him scream so much at the men.
Marion went out with the first group, coached by Sue, while I waited with the others. I stuck my hands in my sweat jacket and looked at Jon. He had a scowl on his face.
"Most of you girls are here for a scenic tour of the river." The guys aren't too bad looking either. "Most of you won't be here tomorrow because all you want is a pretty little trip down the river." He scowled some more and stepped away.
He was beginning to irritate me. This guy didn't know me at all, and he had just lumped me into a general category of useless people that he obviously wanted nothing to do with. Maybe his plan was to discourage the women rowers so he wouldn't have to coach us.
The next day, I exchanged my little red shorts for gray sweatpants and joined Sue and the other women for the next practice. After one afternoon's scenic row on the Narrow River, I was hooked. And Jon was just going to have to put up with it.
CHAPTER 2The Night We Met
November 1977
It was drizzling lightly as I walked along the soggy banks of the Connecticut River carrying a couple of oars. My crew team had just posted a solid third-place finish among ten women's fours at the Head of the Connecticut, a two-and-a-half-mile rowing race. Despite the cold rain, I was buoyed by the excitement of the race as I shoved the wooden sweep oars onto the boat trailer.
"Hey, Kathy!" When I looked over, I saw an old friend waving and drinking beer by a couple of single rowing shells in boat slings. Next to him was a man I didn't know. I strolled over, and Ron introduced me to Curt Saville, the newest member of the Narragansett Boat Club, a Providence, Rhode Island rowing club that I had been a member of since my sophomore year, in 1975. We shook hands and surreptitiously looked each other over as Ron chatted about the latest NBC gossip. Curt Saville, whom I later learned was ten years older than me and had come to Providence to teach at Brown University, was about my height with a stocky build. He must have been cold, because his blue eyes were startlingly bright in his pinched white face. The hood of his sweat jacket was tightly knotted under his chin, making him look older than his thirty-one years.
Amid all the bustle of competing rowing teams carrying long, sleek rowing shells to and from the river, I chatted with Ron and Curt about rowing and the Narragansett Boat Club. When Maggie, our women's coxswain, strolled by to say it was time to pack up our boats and return to Rhode Island, I said a quick goodbye and left.
A week later, with nothing special to do, I caught a ride to Providence with a rowing buddy to go to the annual fall Narragansett Boat Club cocktail party, held at their boat club on the Seekonk River. There, amid the cases of tarnished silver trophies and old wooden oars fixed to the walls, was Curt Saville standing by the bar with a drink in hand. I threaded my way through the crowd to the bar and ordered a Coke. When I looked over at Curt, he smiled. I smiled back, and we began a conversation that went on throughout the cocktail party. We moved to the center of the room and continued talking, while friends occasionally came by to say hello. I learned that Curt had planned to go to a Peace Corps interview in Boston the evening of the cocktail party but the call confirming it hadn't come in time for him to catch the bus to Boston. When I asked him why the Peace Corps, he replied it would be his second stint if he got in; his first had been in 1968 to Bolivia and El Salvador.
"What did you do there?" I asked.
"I was first horn in the National Orchestra of Bolivia and trained local musicians. One of my students, in fact, came to the US through a fellowship I helped him get." He added, "I also did a lot of climbing in the Andes before the Peace Corps was kicked out, and I finished up in El Salvador."
I looked at him, my interest piqued. That was a lot of information. "That's really cool. How did you manage to climb and play in an orchestra at the same time? I mean, didn't you have to be in La Paz?" He smiled and looked happy at the memory. "We did a lot of tours to villages outside of La Paz, in the Amazon basin and to remoter areas of the Andes. My Peace Corps friends and I played informal concerts and did some climbing."
He went on to tell me about climbing 21,122-foot Illimani and others in the Cordillera Blanca range, and the one that he was most proud of: 22,841-foot Aconcagua. He had done Aconcagua with his fellow Juilliard graduate and Peace Corps volunteer Richard "Dobbs" Hartshorne, who was also on those local concert tours with his double bass.
I was impressed. My only travels outside the United States had been to Spain and Portugal as a teenager with my mother. When he told me his family had lived in Italy a couple of times during his parents' sabbatical years while on the faculty at Duke University, I was even more impressed. His years living overseas were so exotic to me and his attending schools like Juilliard and Yale for an MA in music so prestigious that I wanted to know more, as though by knowing how he did it, I might someday have such an adventurous life too.
After an hour of solid conversation, I was looking at him, his face framed by his lanky, straight blond hair and arms sketching out the shape of a mountain or length of a note he would play in a Mozart concerto, when I noticed he was outlined in a soft glow from the dim lighting. At that moment the entire room shifted and tilted. I blinked, and the room was upright again. There had been no physical earthquake, but a seismic shift in my being had left me breathless. I was falling for this man.
Peter Plimpton, a friend from my high school days at a Quaker girls' school that shared classes at the nearby boys' Quaker school and now a fellow member of the boat club, came up to us. Curt knew Peter slightly, so we three chatted together for a short while before Curt and I moved off to the deck of the boathouse to continue talking about his Peace Corps days and his climbing adventures on Baffin and Ellesmere Islands in the High Arctic. In the dim yellow light cast through small square panes of the French doors, he described his travels among the Quechua in Bolivia. He spoke so passionately about the muscular arms and strength of the Quechua women compared to American women's arms that I felt I had to defend myself. My arms were strong and muscular too, I said, pulling up my sweater sleeve. There had to be something I could best him at in his storytelling.
"I row crew, and I'm pretty strong. Here. Feel my muscles," I said, making a fist and flexing my forearm. He nodded and agreed that I was strong like those Quechua chicks. I smiled, and before I left to go home that night, I accepted his invitation to meet at the boathouse the next morning for a row on the Seekonk River.
The crisp fall air felt fresh and invigorating the next morning as I waited for Curt on a wooden bench on River Road, across from the NBC. I was reliving our meeting at last night's cocktail party and thinking about how much fun it was talk about adventurous travel, when I was startled out of my reverie by a guy dressed in white shorts and a blue sweat jacket who came running up to me. For a moment I didn't recognize Curt, and then I was so happy when I realized this smiling guy was here for me.
We crossed the road, undid the lock to the chain fence that secured the boathouse along the riverbank, and signed out a boat to row together. We took our oars down to the dock, then lifted the double rowing shell from its rack in the boathouse and carried it down to the water, where we set out to row our first miles together on the flat, calm waters of the Seekonk.
CHAPTER 3Learning to Row Together
1978
By the official start of the rowing season in the spring of 1978, Curt and I had decided to train together for a race in the mixed (one woman/one man) double category. We had found that we could depend on each other to be at the boat club for practices. Though we liked rowing together, sometimes rowing the double with two oars apiece, it was a challenge to combine our styles and make the shell move smoothly through the water.
My three and a half years of rowing on a university crew team, along with summers spent rowing singles at the NBC, had endowed me with a certain amount of expertise over Curt's homegrown style of rowing. I had the benefit of almost daily coaching and the experience of numerous races competing against college and club teams in boats with four and eight rowers. After my freshman year and a summer of rowing and competing in singles at the NBC, I had decided that rowing stroke, the position nearest the stern end of the boat and the most competitive seat to win, was where I belonged. I rowed stroke for two and a half years until my plummeting GPA took precedence over my rowing career. In later years, I would facetiously tell people I had majored in rowing and minored in textiles and history, my real majors, at the university.
Curt had experience kayaking and rowing simple wooden rowboats, but his training at the Narragansett Boat Club was limited to a few coaching sessions in singles and doubles. After we had spent part of the fall of 1977 and early spring 1978 rowing together on the weekends, I felt we worked together well enough to compete as a mixed double in races in the New England area. Curt had no idea what he was getting into when we began racing together. It was at our first event that he learned how competitive I could be.
"Come on, sprint! Dig those oars in, put some power on!" I shouted from the stern rowing seat of our racing shell as we approached the finish line of our premier 1500-meter race.
"I'm rowing as hard as I can," Curt gasped. He thought we were doing well because out of a field of three boats, we were in second place and holding off the third-place team by several boat lengths. In the last 250 meters, I increased the rowing stroke, the number of times per minute the oars are pulled through the water, and we glided across the finish line to come in a close second. Curt dropped his oars and let them drag in the water. He leaned over the gunwales with a sick look on his face.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Rowing for My Life"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Kathleen Saville.
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xv
Part I Learning to Row
1 Joining the Team 3
2 The Night We Met 7
3 Learning to Row Together 11
4 A Penobscot River Paddle 15
5 Building Our Boat 18
Part II North Atlantic Ocean
6 The Expedition Begins: Casablanca 33
7 Lights under the Water 38
8 Birthday on the Barbary Coast 41
9 Approaching the Canary Islands 47
10 Near Miss 50
11 Tenerife and Hierro 56
12 With the Atlantic in Front of Us 60
13 Night Stories 64
14 Adjusting to Life at Sea 73
15 Red Sails in the Morning 79
16 A Gift from the Sea 84
17 A Calming Sea 96
18 Seed of a Hurricane 103
19 The Big Push 110
20 A Mid-Ocean Celebration 117
21 A Navigation Mystery 123
22 Knee Injury 131
23 Voyaging among the Stars 138
24 Atlantic Encounters 143
25 Landfall-Antigua 155
Part III South Pacific Ocean
26 Preparing and Starting the Row 163
27 To the Galápagos 170
28 Puerto Arroyo, Academy Bay, Santa Cruz Island 186
29 Overboard-Navigating like a Native 194
30 Missing 204
31 The Color of Life 208
32 Hiking in the Marquesas 215
33 Forty Days and Forty Nights 223
34 Pregnant or Not? 231
35 Heavy Weather and Crash Landings 235
36 Through the Coral Sea 245
37 Black Clouds in the Coral Sea 252
38 The Great Barrier Reef and Landfall 258
39 Sydney, Australia 267
Part IV New Identities and New Lives
40 The Boat Shows and Life on Land 273
41 Solar Boat Voyages on the Mississippi and Elsewhere 284
42 In Casablanca Again 288
43 New Beginnings 295
44 Egyptian Lives 302
45 A Call from the Desert 309
46 Desert Petroglyphs 317
47 Understanding Desert Islands: Am Eastern Desert Trek 325
Epilogue 331