Sarah Kessans came to New Zealand for a two-year postdoc. Thirteen years later she's still here - an Associate Professor at the University of Canterbury working across synthetic biology, space research, and agricultural climate science.

But before all of that, she was a 20-year-old from Indiana with $500, no ocean experience, and an idea she'd read about on a plane.

In this episode, Sarah tells the full story of how she and her college rowing rival entered the Woodvale Atlantic Rowing Race — a 5,000 km crossing from the Canary Islands to Antigua. How they built their own boat, raised $150,000 from nothing, and arrived at the start line as one of the most prepared crews in a fleet of 26.

And what happened on Day 45 when a rogue wave flipped their boat upside down, 1,400 miles from land, in the middle of a hurricane.

In this episode:

• How a single book on a flight changed the entire direction of her life
• Building a racing boat in her dad's cabinet workshop in Indiana
• What it's actually like to row through the night, alone, in the middle of the Atlantic
• The capsize — and the 14 hours that followed
• Why she went back
• Breaking the women's world record by 17 days

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