Challenging the Pacific: The First Woman to Row the Kon-Tiki Route

Description

Just two years after rowing solo across the North Atlantic at the age of twenty-five, Maud Fontenoy was ready for a new challenge-crossing the Pacific Ocean. Leaving from Lima, Peru, and traveling 4,400 miles in seventy-three days, Fontenoy landed in Hiva Oa in French Polynesia, becoming the first woman to complete what is known as the "Kon-Tiki" route. Alone at sea for days and nights on end, Fontenoy's story relates the ups and downs of her time at sea, from circling sharks to the celebrity welcome upon her journey's end. Named one of Time Magazine International's thirty most important people of 2005, Fontenoy presents the reader with a terrific, entertaining adventure story on the high seas as she faces the Pacific Ocean. Fontenoy overcame the odds as well as her personal doubts and fears, demonstrating not only her indomitable courage and strength, but proving once again that women can conquer the most difficult and treacherous obstacles.

Maud Fontenoy has completed solo rowing across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and most recently completed a sailing trip around the Antarctic. A Time (Europe) Hero of 2005. Fontenoy was awarded the French Order of Merit in 2007, and was named the UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission and the World Ocean Network Spokesperson for the Ocean in 2009. A lifelong sailor who lived for the first fifteen years on her life on her parents' schooner, she lives and teaches in France.