HALIFAX – It’s not exactly cozy, but Mylène Paquette will be calling a 20-foot row boat ‘home’ for the next 100 days.
Her goal is to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean, with hopes of landing in France in 100 days.
Paquette, 30, discovered rowing seven years ago. Her inspiration for this trek came when she worked at a children’s hospital in Montreal.
“One of the patients I knew, she was 16 and she told me ‘I don’t know what it is to fight for something,’ and I came back home with the firm intention to row across the Atlantic Ocean,” she said.
During her expedition, she’ll be in constant contact with her ground crew support team including a French meteorologist, two doctors and two technicians.
Paquette says it would take a fire on board, a broken limb or an extremely ill family member before she would abandon her trip. If she is in distress and in need of rescue along the way, the nearest cargo ship will be summoned to pick her up.
“I’m going to tell myself it’s just a day rowing,” she says. “It’s just one day, I’m just going to row for one day and tomorrow, we’ll talk about it. So, just take one day at a time and one stroke at a time, and I’m going to get there.”
Paquette arrived in Halifax in mid-June. She had to postpone the start of her voyage repeatedly, due to inclement weather.
The rower will be blogging her journey: www.mylenepaquette.com
Paquette will be posting regularly on her Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/DefisMylenePaquette
You can also follow Paquette’s tweets below:
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