SEATTLE — As a member of the University of Washington’s elite women’s varsity crew, Eliza Dawson honed her athletic skills on the sometimes-choppy waters of Lake Washington.
This summer, she’ll test her rowing talent in a far more challenging environment, where small crews of rowers rarely go: the Pacific Ocean.
Dawson is taking part in a 2,400-mile rowing race from Monterey, Calif., to Honolulu. She and three teammates are aiming to break a world record — 50 days, 8 hours, 14 minutes, set in 2014 — for a women’s rowing team.
Dawson and her three teammates will begin rowing across the Pacific Ocean on June 2. She plans to post updates on her personal blog, http://row4climate.com/ and on her team’s blog, http://www.rippleeffectrowing.com/
But they also want to put a spotlight on the far-reaching impacts of humankind on the Earth by rowing across parts of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — a vast gyre of pulverized plastic garbage occupying an area roughly four times the size of California.
Dawson, who studied atmospheric sciences at the UW and will begin working on her doctorate at Stanford University this fall, plans to send photos and videos of the garbage patch. She hopes to record the journey on her blog and the team’s blog as she goes.
“It’s going to be a hard, demanding journey — and that’s what it’s going to take to combat climate change,” said Dawson, 22, who was a member of the UW crew in 2016 and 2017.
The four women will alternate two hours of rowing with two hours of sleep, 24 hours a day, for 40 to 50 days. They’ll be rowing a specially designed oceangoing rowboat they’ve named the Ripple Effect.
Their journey is part of the third Great Pacific Race, organized by New Ocean Wave, a British company. It involves eight teams of rowers crossing the Pacific. They are the only all-women team in the race.
Dargan Frierson, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at the UW and one of Dawson’s former professors, described Dawson as “the type of person who tries to do things that seem impossible.
“I hope it raises awareness about the types of changes we’re making to the environment,” he said “The oceans are different from when she was born (in 1996). They are a lot hotter, a lot more acidic. And, there’s a lot more plastic.”
One day last week, Dawson and her coach, Conal Groom of the Seattle Rowing Center, carried a one-person shell out onto the water east of the Ballard Bridge. Dawson sat on the impossibly small seat and rowed the sleek shell past a line of brawny, battered commercial-fishing boats with names like Determined, Aleutian Challenger, Sea Venture and Botany Bay.
Skimming along under a cloudy sky, she scattered a flock of ducks and passed a partly submerged plastic bag floating in the water.
In an oceangoing race, “technique is useless,” said Groom, who rowed in the 2000 Summer Olympics. “It’s basically fitness. My job is to make sure she has enough training.”
Dawson typically rows up to two hours a day in the morning. In the afternoon, she works out for another two hours, doing a range of fitness activities including cycling and weightlifting. When she’s not training, she’s working to raise $20,000 to help fund the journey.
The race will hinge on things that are beyond her team’s control — weather, currents, waves. “And luck,” Groom said.
