Julie Angus' Rowboat in a Hurricane: My Amazing Journey Across a Changing Atlantic Ocean (Greystone 2008) is her story of rowing across the Atlantic, from Lisbon to Costa Rica. More than 200 people used oar-power to cross the Atlantic before her, including 18 women, but none had crossed from the mainland of one continent to the mainland of another (10,000 kilometres). Most oar-powered crossings have connected the Canary and Caribbean Islands (5,000 kilometres). Angus did it with her then-fiance, Colin Angus, who was completing a round-the-world expedition using human power only. During their 145-day journey, they were hit by four cyclones, including two hurricanes. She received National Geographic's Adventurer of the Year Award.

"Two Norweigians in 1896 became the first two people to row across the Atlantic," she writes. "Between the first transatlantic rowboat voyage from New York to England and my planning in the summer of 2004, 208 additional rowers had succeeded in crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Six people had died trying, and dozens had required deep-sea rescue. The number of successful ocean crossings is low, especially when compared to other extreme endeavours such as climbing Mount Everest and skiing to the South Pole."

In her Olive Odyssey: Searching for the Secrets of the Fruit That Seduced the World (Greystone 2014), Julie Angus describes sailing from Spain to the Middle East with her husband and a baby that won't sleep, to investigate the history of the olive. While collecting DNA samples from olive trees in an effort to determine where the first olive tree originated, they follow the route of ancient Phoenicians and describe how and why oil became an important commodity. There is, of course, some obligatory investigative feasting on inky black tapenades and chicken drizzled with green-gold oil in Cassis. Along the way they witness olive harvesting in Greece and visit what they are told is the oldest olive tree in the world, in Corsica.

Julie Angus of Courtenay has two bachelor's degrees, in psychology and biology, and a master's degree in molecular biology from the University of Victoria. She has written for a variety of publications. Following the Atlantic crossing, she and her husband undertook a human-powered journey from Scotland to Syria, on bicycles and in boats, which was to be the subject of a co-authored book.

BOOKS:

Rowboat in a Hurricane: My Amazing Journey Across a Changing Atlantic Ocean (Greystone 2008) $22 978-1-55365-337-0

Olive Odyssey: Searching for the Secrets of the Fruit That Seduced the World (Greystone 2014). $28.95; 978-1-55365-514-5
Ebook: 9781771000062

[BCBW 2014] "Women" "Maritime"