Ohio Woman Is Youngest to Cross the Atlantic Alone

(March 15) -- The Atlantic Ocean is no match for Katie Spotz.

The 22-year-old woman became the youngest person to make the trip across the Atlantic alone in a rowboat. After 70 days at sea, hundreds of well-wishers welcomed Spotz into the port of Georgetown, Guyana Sunday as she completed her 2,817 mile journey from Dakar, Senegal.

"The hardest part was just the solo part," Spotz told The Associated Press.

For over two months, she rowed alone amid high waves, beating sun, and very little fresh food. But for the Mentor, Ohio native, "endurance challenges" are a way of life. In 2008, Spotz became the first person to swim the entire length of the 325-mile Allegheny River. She has also biked across the country and ran 150 miles across the Mojave and Colorado deserts alone.

Spotz's trans-Atlantic row raised over $70,000 for the Blue Planet Run Foundation, which works to provide safe drinking water around the world.

Her coach, Sam Williams, said Spotz was more interested helping the foundation's cause than she was in breaking records.

"The records are just a bonus for Katie. Rowing the Atlantic and raising funds for clean water are the things she really cares about," Williams told the AP.

But there's a reason so few rowers dare to make the trip across the Atlantic. According to The New York Times, Spotz rowed between 8 and 10 hours a day, and said rough waves made it difficult to sleep. "Sleeping was a real problem," Spotz told The Times. "It took a toll to put out that much physical effort on very little rest."

About a week ago, Spotz had nearly made landfall when she encountered such rough seas that she was forced to row 400 miles to the northeast of her original destination of Cayenne, French Guiana, to Georgetown.

On the second-to-last day of the trip, her GPS tracker caught on fire. At one point, she encountered 20-foot waves. "I was worried the boat might capsize," she said. Spotz ate freeze-dried meals, munched on small plants she grew on board, and, according to the AP, dug into a watermelon as soon as she hit the shore in Guyana.

In 2005, a 23-year-old British man set the previous record when he rowed from New Jersey to England.

Spotz did have some company on her journey. Sharks, birds, and powered by the boat's solar panels, her iPod, which The Times reports she used to listen to audio books on meditation. She also carried a laptop so she could update her blog at night and communicate with friends, family, and even radio hosts like Rosie O'Donnell while away at sea. "At night I would update my Facebook and e-mails. There is not much else to do on a row boat," she told the AP.

Her blog and Twitter feed give some idea of just how dangerous -- and extraordinary -- her journey really was.

Giant tunas sometimes leaped out of the water and harassed her. "Had a word with the big fat tunas to explain that my boat is not a pinata," she tweeted on Feb. 2. "They don't seem to understand."

Her sense of humor proved helpful as well.

"If anyone wants to set up a lemonade stand at 8N 31W, it could be a very lucrative business right now," she tweeted one day.

But on the open sea the threats were no joke. On day 69, as she neared the South American coast, Spotz posted an entry about the waves that threatened to overwhelm her rowboat. "The understanding between me and the ocean changed," she wrote:

Waves seemed to spike up unexpectedly with great force. Every moment outside was spent harnessed to the boat and I frequently questioned whether it would capsize. Everything inside the boat was tied down nicely, including myself by strapping myself in when sleeping. All 'capsize ready.'

Large ships can be perilous to a rowboat, but Spotz seems to have been undaunted. On Feb. 28, she posted this photo of a massive freighter nearby her 19-foot rowboat on Twitter, along with the caption, "I eat freighters for breakfast."

Worried, Spotz's parents initially tried to dissuade their daughter from making the trip, but eventually, they came around and threw their full support behind her.

"I guess I just have to kind of appreciate the fact that this is who Katie is, and there's not going to be anything that's going to change her," Mary Spotz told the Cleveland Plain Dealer on Sunday. "I'm just along for this ride."