An American who set out on crossing the Pacific Ocean has handed in the towel due to bad weather, steering failure and a sense that "things didn't seem to be going right".
Sonya Baumstein, who is 30 years old, departed from Choshi, Japan one week ago to travel across the Pacific to San Francisco, California, US to become the first woman to accomplish such a giant feat.
Her support team has made the comments that her 7 meters long carbon custom boat steering had failed and that Sonya Baumstein had lost two drogues devices that are used as floating anchors to keep the boat level in the waves.
Also, weather conditions made it very difficult to identify nearby ships with an onboard Automated Identification Signal (AIS) and that ships were passing her by too closely.
When she first set out she spent the last seven days close to shore trying to get to grips with sea sickness. As planned she then made progress and was able to proceed to the Kuroshio current which crosses the Pacific.
Once underway she started to get the feeling that things weren't going as planned, with losing two bounce devices and her steering giving way. Also, her support team were concerned with the weather forecast once she arrived in California in late autumn.
Sonya Baumstein was rowing without a support boat and was approaching the limits of sending a distress call and as she was 250 kilometres off the Fukushima coast, her support team advised it would be irresponsible to continue.
After sending a distress signal a freighter that was travelling close by rescued her and after a few hours the Japanese Coast Guard picked her up and towed her boat back to Kita Ibaraki Prefecture shore, which is 154 kilometres northeast of Tokyo.
Sonya Baumstein arrived back in Japan on Monday morning and has said that any cost for her rescue would be handled by her insurance.
Her attempt at crossing the Pacific has been met with both sorrow and criticism. When she first announced her goal, twitter users went on a violent rampage by insulting her weight and some even insulting her for being a woman.
