COURTESY OF SARAHOUTEN.COM
The makeshift rudder made by Sarah Outen.
BARNSTABLE – It was a rough week for British adventurer Sarah Outen, who is attempting to row across the Northern Atlantic on the final leg of her trek around the world.
Outen has been out on the water for almost two months and just recently lost her rudder which led to another setback.
“We have been cruising along in totally the wrong direction for the last 24 hours,” she said on Friday on a phone cast, which she posts on her website on an occasional basis. “Being pulled backwards by currents even through some reasonably useful winds southwest and south-southwest winds.”
Outen said losing the rudder erased headway she had been making.
“I can see that we might end up going around in a massive circle and voiding the last sort of 10 days of progress,” she said.
Outen says a new rudder is currently being fabricated in the United Kingdom and she hopes to have it delivered soon.
“I made a replacement rudder the other day which was great fun,” Outen said.
The makeshift rudder is helping, but Outen does not expect it to last through rough seas and adverse weather conditions.
She is also headed further north than she had hoped.
“Unfortunately the only thing that I seem to be approaching is the Grand Banks and Canada,” she said. “I love the latter and am intrigued by the former, though I want to visit neither. I want to go home.”
Although the trip has not gone smoothly, Outen continues to think about the future.
“My plans are for wrapping the journey with storytelling—film and book and talks—and then focusing on getting kids outside and connected with the land via an adventure farm,” she said.
She continues to discuss those plans with her fiancé.
“Lucy and I swap ideas on it frequently,” she said. “That and our wedding, which takes up even more phone hours. It is a bit of a double life in some ways—being so isolated and immersed in the moment of the ocean, contrasted with talk of future plans and happenings.”
Outen left Chatham on May 14 and has traveled almost 1,200 miles.
Her journey around the world has taken over four years. Her row across the Atlantic was originally expected to take about 3 months.
Outen spent five weeks in Chatham before heading out to sea in her 21-foot rowboat.
