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" Here are a few things Katie Spotz can say from experience that most people cannot. Rowing a boat across the Atlantic Ocean is really, really hard. When little fish jump out of the sea and slap you in the face, it doesn&amp;#039;t hurt much. Big fish hurt more. Ocean rowboats are great for rowing but bad for sleeping. Going to the bathroom in a bucket on a rowboat in the middle of the ocean is like riding a bull in a rodeo.  &amp;quot;You get used to waking up every morning and seeing nothing but ocean and sky,&amp;quot; says Spotz, 22.  When she landed in the South American port of Georgetown, Guyana on Sunday, March 14, Spotz became the youngest person and the first American ever to row an ocean solo from mainland to mainland. The 2817-mile trip from Dakar, Senegal in Western Africa took her 70 days, five hours and 22 minutes. In the small world of ocean rowing, that&amp;#039;s the equivalent of hauling serious butt. It&amp;#039;s especially impressive because instead of landing at Cayenne, French Guiana, where the seas were so rough she would have needed a powerboat to tow her the last few miles into port, she chose to row to the calmer waters of Georgetown, an extra eight days and 400 miles away.  &amp;quot;She went a lot farther than she hoped because she wanted to do the whole trip with no outside help,&amp;quot; says Sam Williams, who rowed the Atlantic in 2008 and spoke with Spotz regularly by satellite phone during the trip, serving as her primary link to the outside world.  Spotz made good time partly because she didn&amp;#039;t face any storms. As she approached South America she did hit strong currents and 20-foot waves, which struck from the side and swallowed her yellow 19-foot rowboat whole. Spotz found this insufficiently terrifying.  &amp;quot;This boat was designed to take 50-foot waves,&amp;quot; says Spotz. &amp;quot;I never got to see what it could do.&amp;quot; Which is not to say that rowing the Atlantic was easy. Within the first week she developed calluses and a rash that made it painful to row. Her watertight sleeping cabin bobbed constantly in the waves and was suffocatingly hot, which prevented her from getting a decent night&amp;#039;s sleep for the entire trip.  &amp;quot;Sleeping was a real problem,&amp;quot; Spotz said. &amp;quot;It took a toll to put out that much physical effort on very little rest.&amp;quot; After a month of rowing, Spotz realized she still had not reached the halfway point. Depression set in. But Spotz had seen this coming. As an endurance athlete who has run marathons, cycled across the United States and swam the entire Allegheny River, Spotz learned that every endurance event has a moment where the whole adventure seems hopeless. Before the trip, she trained for months with a sport psychologist to learn meditation.  &amp;quot;I really couldn&amp;#039;t think too far in advance because otherwise it was overwhelming,&amp;quot; Spotz says. &amp;quot;I had to keep thinking about these doable, achievable baby steps.&amp;quot; After the breakdown, Spotz found her stride. By the end of the trip, she was rowing up to 60 miles a day.  &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s very weird to get out of sight of land and realize this 19-foot boat will be your home for the next three months,&amp;quot; Williams says. &amp;quot;But it didn&amp;#039;t really seem to phase her at all. She seemed quite happy with it.&amp;quot; Spotz grew up in the Cleveland suburb of Mentor, Ohio, and spent the past two years there preparing for the trip. She bought her used wooden boat for $30,000 and stuffed it with 600 pounds of gear including redundant GPS systems, backup radios and emergency beacons. She also packed half a million calories&amp;#039; worth of food\u2014mostly freeze-dried dinners, granola and dried fruit\u2014enough to last 110 days. &amp;quot;I wound up having so much extra food, it&amp;#039;s insane,&amp;quot; she says.  When she left, Spotz hoped to raise $30,000 for the charity, enough to give drinking water for 1,000 people for life. She wound up raising over $70,000 through her website, rowforwater.com, more than doubling the number of people she can help. As Spotz climbed the ladder to the pier in downtown Georgetown, at the end of her trip, her legs felt so weak she nearly collapsed, she said. Hours later, in her hotel room, she felt like the world was still spinning and bobbing. But she did not sleep. Instead she ate some watermelon, drank a glass of water, and went to the hotel computer lab to start emailing friends and followers about her trip.  &amp;quot;If I&amp;#039;d just rowed across an ocean, I&amp;#039;d need to sleep for a week,&amp;quot; her father Dan Spotz said over the telephone after his daughter left the hotel room. &amp;quot;But she&amp;#039;s just walking around like it&amp;#039;s no big deal. For her, it&amp;#039;s just another day.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/outdoors/a5515/katie-spotz-finishes-row/>