Photos by Tom Campbell The cramped quarters of the boat’s cabin require that Kessans and her teammate rotate their two-hour sleep shifts during their Atlantic voyage, which starts next November in the Canary Islands.

As a ship of dreams, the American Fire isn’t much. It’s 24 feet long and six feet wide with a glove compartment of a cabin, an even smaller storage hatch, four oarlocks and not much else.

But when Sarah Kessans and Emily Kohl finally put the boat in the water this summer, they were as giddy as kids at Christmas.

“We could not stop smiling,” says Kohl, a

May history graduate and assistant rowing coach at Michigan State University. “It was a great moment.”

Teammates on the Purdue rowing team for three years, Kessans and Kohl will rely on the American Fire to deliver them from the Canary Islands off the coast of West Africa to Antigua in the 2005 Woodvale Atlantic Rowing Race.

It was an idea Kessans, a senior in Purdue Agriculture’s botany and plant pathology department, came up with during a study abroad program in Ireland.

“I think I was the only one on the Purdue team that didn’t think she was crazy when she told us she wanted to row across the Atlantic,” says Kohl.

The pair bought a boat with one Atlantic crossing under its belt from a pair of American rowers, Tom Mailhot and John Zeigler.

The 2005 Woodvale Atlantic Rowing Race is still a year away, but Kessans (left) and Kohl have established a nonstop training regimen, which included working out on the boat this summer at Eagle Creek Park in Indianapolis.

“We decided to name the boat the American Fire,” Kessans says. “The ‘American’ part is because we are following in the footsteps of our fellow Yanks and the ‘Fire’ part because of our burning desire for success that we gained from our rowing careers at Purdue.”

If Kessans and Kohl can stoke the American Fire the 2,900 nautical miles to Antigua, they will enter the record book as the youngest American women to row across the Atlantic Ocean.

Utilizing the Gulf Stream and prevailing westerly winds, Kessans and Kohl hope to make the Atlantic crossing in about 50 days.

How difficult is the Woodvale race?

Imagine rowing the entire breadth of the United States and the only scenery is the back end of a 1,600-pound boat rising and falling through endlessly rolling waves.

Race organizers, who call their event “one of the world’s last great adventures,” are quick to point out that more people have climbed Mount Everest than have rowed across the Atlantic Ocean. In the event’s three races (1997, 2001 and 2003), 72 teams have successfully navigated the ocean, where 50-foot waves are not uncommon.

“I’ve always wanted to do something like this,” says Kessans, “to participate in a challenge that tests the limits of my body and mind to the fullest.”

Kessans comes by her adventurous spirit honestly. Her father, Tim, a cabinetmaker, is a retired U.S. Marine Corps captain.

“My mom (Nancy) is still getting over the fact that I am going to do this race, but my dad raised me to be adventurous. I grew up on a 160-acre farm. I was always out by myself doing something halfway crazy.”

In high school, Kessans was a star athlete, lettering 13 times in four sports at Eastern High School in Washington County. When she came to Purdue, she channeled all of her athletic energies into rowing. A four-year team member, Kessans was voted most valuable oarswoman in 2003.

But the longest race Kessans ever participated in was 6,000 meters, a race that takes about 24 minutes to complete with the help of seven other rowers.

The Woodvale not only challenges the competitor’s physical endurance, but mental tenacity, too. Two months in a 24-foot boat would test the strongest of friendships.

“I hope we can get along for that long,” says Kessans. “Emily and I are the two most competitive people on our team, but there is nothing we can’t work out when we put our minds to it.”

The first thing they need to work out is meeting the incredible financial commitment for the race.

The registration fee is $560, chump change compared to the $27,000 race fee that covers insurance and the cost of the two support yachts that follow the racers across the ocean like a pair of giant floating lifeguards.

Then there is the boat itself. The pair saved a little money by buying a used boat.

“We spent around $40,000 to buy American Fire,” Kessans says. But it is money well spent. Not only do they get the boat and a trailer to pull it, but they get a boatload of sage advice from Mailhot and Zeigler, who have become rowing mentors to Kessans and Kohl.

“If we had built a boat from scratch, as we had planned, it would cost about the same,” Kessans says. “But we are saving money on equipment and the trailer that came with it. We are also saving a lot of time, which we can now use to host PR events and find sponsors.”

Each boat must contain solar panels, a Global Positioning System, life jackets and raft, a satellite phone, extra oars, a cooker, a water desalinator (makes ocean water potable), and food and supplements for a 70-day voyage (worst-case scenario). That makes the price tag for race participation in the pricey neighborhood of $75,000.

The pair is also packing some fishing tackle. Fresh fish would be a welcome change from their steady diet of freeze-dried pastas, stews, chili and a case of energy bars.

Kessans and Kohl plan on having their boat in the Canaries three weeks prior to the race for additional training. Shipping the boat and themselves to the Canaries and home again after the race could bump the bill to around $150,000. Which is why, for the next year, in addition to training for the race, Kessans and Kohl will be doing everything but going door-to-door looking for sponsors willing to fund their great adventure.

Supporters can buy a little slice of their Atlantic adventure by sponsoring one mile of rowing for $30. For a contribution with many more zeros in the number, Kassens and Kohl say they are willing to change the name on the side of the boat from American Fire to “whatever the donor wants it to be.”

Raising that much money may be every bit as daunting as rowing across the Atlantic Ocean.

“I know the race seems like a long way off,” says Kessans. “But with everything we have to do to prepare, it’s going to be here before we know it.”

With each day of training and fund raising that passes, their dream becomes more finely focused.

“We actually got a chance to sleep in the boat (in August at Eagle Creek),” says Kohl. “We absolutely loved it. The feeling we got by being in the boat and rowing it made our dream a little more real.”

Contact Kessans at skessans@purdue.edu.