The Reading Warehouse

At the age of forty-five, Gerard d'Aboville set out to row across the Pacific Ocean from Japan to the United States. Taking his rowboat the Sector, which had a living compartment thirty-one inches high, containing a bunk, one-burner stove, and a ham radio, d'Aboville made his way across an ocean 6,200 miles wide. Though he rowed twelve hours a day, battled cyclones and headwinds that kept him in one place for days at a time, was capsized dozens of times forty-foot waves that hit him like cannonballs, he never quit; even when he was trapped upside down inside his cabin for almost two hours while nearly depleting his oxygen trying to right the boat.

One hundred and thirty-four days after his departure, d'Aboville arrived in the little fishing village of Ilwaco, Washington, leaving his body bruised and battered, and weighing thirty-seven pounds less. This is his story.