SARAH OUTEN was far from alone in deciding to take a round-the-world journey after university. But she may become the only woman in history to make an entirely human-powered trip.
Using only a bicycle, a kayak and a boat, the British adventurer has already navigated her way around most of the planet. This week she will set off from New York on the final leg of her “London2London: via the world” expedition.
There is just the small matter of bicycle ride to Cape Cod and a solo four-month row across the Atlantic to complete her four-year mission.
Along the way, Miss Outen has been shipwrecked by a tropical storm in the Pacific, survived a perilously close encounter with the bow of a cargo ship and evaded the unwelcome attentions of snakes in Kazakhstan and grizzly bears in Alaska.
In an interview in Manhattan, where she was resting and catching up with friends, she said she was taking nothing for granted.
“It seems strange talking about the home straight when you still have to get across the North Atlantic, but I do feel that the end will soon be in sight,” said the 29-year-old, from Oakham, Rutland.
Miss Outen is raising money for charities devoted to breast cancer awareness, sailing for the disabled, water aid and motor neurone disease, as well as talking to schools about her experiences. She was awarded an MBE for a 2009 expedition when she rowed solo across the Indian Ocean, the first woman and youngest person to do so.
As a young woman she fell in love with rowing while
Sarah Outen, in the kayak she named Happy Socks, passes a volcano while paddling 1,500 miles along the remote Aleutian island chain to reach mainland Alaska
The adventurer departs from London on April Fools’ Day 2011
studying biology at Oxford where, she acknowledges, she spent as much time on the river as with her books. In 2011 she set off by kayak from Tower Bridge on April Fools’ Day, she notes wryly, to head east-to-west across the world.
The latest leg will involve her bicycle, Hercules, and Happy Socks, her 21ft rowing boat. She will celebrate her 30th birthday on the ocean — one of several personal landmarks she has passed at sea or on the road. Most notably, she proposed to her girlfriend Lucy Allen by satellite phone from the middle of the Pacific in 2013.
“She only accepted the second time I asked because she couldn’t make out what I was saying the first time as the connection was so bad,” said Miss Outen as she mused on the benefits and banes of the modern technology that keeps her in touch from the most remote spots on Earth.
With 21,600 miles completed and about 4,000 more to go, the bald statistics of the trip are staggering. After kayaking from London to France, she cycled 11,000 miles across Europe and Asia and returned to her kayak to travel from Russia to Japan. But it was rowing across the Pacific that provided her greatest challenge in 2012.
Three weeks into the voyage, she was battered by a tropical storm that repeatedly capsized her boat as she was strapped into her cabin.
“I looked out of the window and it just looked like the Alps were engulfing me because there were these huge waves all topped with the foaming white,” she said. “The boat capsized and rolled 20 times and there was nothing I could do. It was frightening. It’s the only time I’d really like someone else to be there with me.”
After three harrowing days trapped in her boat, she was spotted and rescued by the Japanese coastguard. Her most terrifying experience also came crossing the Pacific the next year, during a fogbound few days, when she heard what she was sure was the roar of an engine. Her automated identification system was not picking up or alerting other vessels because, as it turned out, the solar-panel batteries had not charged in the murk. Peeking out, she saw a light which she realised was the bow of a giant container vessel bearing straight down on her.
“It felt like it was going to obliterate me,” she said. “I jumped back in the cabin and
Arriving in New York this month after completing 21,600 miles
prayed that the bow wave would save me by pushing me along the side of the vessel. That’s exactly what happened, but it was an incredibly close call.”
All these physical challenges can pale compared to the mental ones, however, of tackling such a mission alone.
“At times, I’ll focus on whatever needs to be done, the tasks I have, or just the battle to keep going. But there are times when I just empty my mind and let stuff float in and take my surroundings, just enjoy the moment. liberating.”
Back home, Miss Outen and her partner, a farmer from Oxfordshire, plan to marry in summer 2016. She also aims to complete a book and a film, take part in a school tour and she and her new spouse want to create an adventure centre for children.
“I’m not sure exactly what path things will take, but I’m sure that a combination of adventure and education will be my future,” she added.
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