US Woman Attempting to Row Solo Across Pacific Rescued Off Japanese Coast

A U.S. woman attempting to cross the Pacific by rowboat has ended her solo attempt because of expected bad weather.

Sonya Baumstein was rescued off the Japanese coast on Saturday after sending out a distress signal, Kyodo news agency reported on Sunday.

The 30-year-old Baumstein departed from Choshi, Japan, one week ago, hoping to become the first woman to row solo across the Pacific.

I’m afraid of losing my boat because I spent three years creating this thing,” Baumstein told NBC Bay Area before she departed.

She was headed for San Francisco but sent out the signal on Saturday around 2:20 p.m. about 155 miles off the coast of Japan.

A freighter traveling nearby rescued her at around 5 p.m. Saturday and passed her on to a coast guard ship around 8:55 p.m., the Japanese coast guard said.

Baumstein was hoping to finish the 6,000-mile journey by late September.

“It all depends on how you want to use the moments that you have in your life,” Baumstein said in her earlier interview, “and this is the moment in my life right now.”

An update posted to Baumstein's Facebook page Sunday said that Baumstein had made the decision to abandon this year's attempt after "long conversations, loosing a drogue, a critical steering system failure, and battling headwinds and typhoons."

"You might have noticed on the tracker that we are heading back to Japan," the post from team lead Andrew Cull said. "The past eight days have been interesting and we knew we were taking a chance with the weather and late season, concerned more about the weather upon arrival in California in the fall.

"While we were only eight days in, the progress against wind and storms was slow and the next few weeks promised more storms and potentially even slower progress. Furthermore, she was receiving constant AIS alarms which given the weather conditions so far made it impossible to see the many vessels near her.

On top of the data, Sonya and some team members felt that things weren't going right. While we couldn't put our finger on it, something felt wrong. Our expedition experience has taught us that when that feeling doesn't go away, you pay attention. As we prepared to leave normal Coast Guard range, that feeling only got stronger. As a team, we felt that combined with incoming weather, loosing a piece of critical equipment with a a single backup, it would be irresponsible to continue. Perhaps more importantly, none of us could justify putting responder's lives at risk by pushing further."

The Japanese Coast Guard picked up Sonya and towed the boat safely back to Japan, Cull's post said. "They are underway now, and we are eternally grateful for their hospitality and assistance," Cull said.

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