June 17th,2010 by Eric
ABOARD THE ANNE, off New Jersey — After 1,152 days meandering the world’s oceans on a 70-foot schooner he built himself, Reid Stowe plans to sail into New York on Thursday afternoon and claim the record for the longest sea voyage in history — eclipsing a century-old record by almost three months. But it is not ending exactly as planned.
When the journey of the Anne began in April 2007, there were two travelers intent on staying out of sight of land for a thousand days. Mr. Stowe, 55, a veteran sailor, was with Soanya Ahmad, 23, a recent City College graduate who had never been at sea. She did fine at first, but was forced to leave after 10 months when she felt overcome by seasickness — which turned out not to be seasickness.
Ms. Ahmad transferred to a local yacht near the Australian coast and returned home to Jamaica, Queens, to deliver their son, Darshen, now 23 months. Mr. Stowe went on sailing alone. When he pulled into New York Habor and moored off Sandy Hook on Wednesday afternoon, he said it was his first glimpse of land in more than two years.
“The first people I’ve seen in years!” he shouted happily, as a boat carrying a United States Customs officer and half a dozen other people approached his schooner. It looked much the worse for wear; he did not.
“I was never lonely once in the whole voyage,” he said, once he had welcomed aboard his first visitors. “Being alone in the wildness and beauty of nature is an enlightening experience.”
He viewed his trip in the tradition of religious hermits who go off by themselves: “You not only enlighten yourself, but you nourish the spirit of your culture.”
To the uninitiated, those might sound like the words of a man who has been too long at sea by himself, but not to the friends and sponsors of Mr. Stowe’s expedition. During his years living at a pier in Chelsea aboard the Anne, he became known as a singular blend of mariner, mystic, carpenter, painter, sculptor and New Age philosopher.
During the voyage, he spent much of his time sewing torn sails and performing other maintenance, like repairing the the bowsprit after a collision with a freighter. He sustained himself with regular yoga and mediation, subsisting on rainwater, fish and sprouts grown on the boat, along with beans, cheese, oatmeal, pasta and rice.
“I’ve still got enough food left for another year,” he said, inviting his guests to a meal of dried dates, nuts and Parmesan cheese that tasted remarkably good after three years at sea.
He said he had not been sick or injured the entire trip, and he credited his health to his diet, especially the sprouts, which he ate twice a day. “Sprouts can save the world,” he said.
The hardest part of the journey, he said, was saying goodbye to Ms. Ahmad, but he felt compelled to finish the voyage.
In an interview on Tuesday, Ms. Ahmad said she understood. “There was really no question of him abandoning the journey,” she said. “Before we left, we had an agreement that if I wanted to leave, he would go on by himself. It was for the best. If he had come back, he would still be planning on doing the whole 1,000-day trip again. It had been an obsession with him since the 1980s.”
It took Mr. Stowe two decades to find sponsors for the trip, which was billed as the Mars Ocean Odyssey: a voyage to study the stresses on an isolated, self-sustained crew over the length of a Mars mission. During his search for sponsors, he had assured Jeff Blumenfeld, the editor of Expedition News, a monthly newsletter about explorers, that he would be prepared for all contingencies of a long voyage by taking the proper supplies, including contraceptives.
Reminded on Wednesday of that promise, Mr. Stowe grinned and said: “People make mistakes. Things happen. We sure didn’t want it to happen. But now that it has, I see it as a positive.”
After Ms. Ahmad went home, he began calling it the Love Voyage. With his supporters in New York tracking his route by satellite, he set a course in the South Atlantic that traced a gigantic heart in her honor.
Another of the goals was to break the record for the longest sea voyage: the 1,067 days that the crew of a Norwegian ship, the Fram, was away from land in the 1890s, when it became frozen in Arctic ice during the explorer Fridtjof Nansen’s attempt to reach the North Pole.
Mr. Stowe is to be greeted at a pier on West 42nd Street by Ms. Ahmad and the son he has never seen. During the journey, in the blog, 1000days.net, that Mr. Stowe wrote on a computer (until it broke last year) and dispatched by satellite phone, he mused on his responsibilities to Ms. Ahmad and Darshen.
“They are not the first woman and child to wait for their man to come home from the sea,” he wrote. “It is the most ancient of stories.”
Well, yes, it is an old story. Penelope waited during Odysseus’ 10-year voyage home, and they were not able to hold weekly conversations by satellite phone, as this couple did. Then again, Penelope did not have to welcome back a sailor who had been all by himself for two years. Might readjustment to family life be a little difficult for everyone?
“I’m not apprehensive,” Ms. Ahmad said. “I doubt he is. Before, he’s gone out for 100 days, 200 days, and he’s been his usual old self.”
For his part, Mr. Stowe looked anything but apprehensive. He showed a berth on board that he had converted for his son, and said he looked forward to the family living together on the boat on the New York waterfront.
And what, besides seeing his family, was the first thing he wanted to do once he set foot on land? “I have no wants at all,” he said. “I want to make everyone happy. I want to share the story.”
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Three years after the FDA proposed a four-star system to rate sunscreen’s effectiveness against UVA rays, not just UVB rays (which are connoted by SPF), U.S.-produced sprays and lotions remain without acceptable consumer guidelines, making our sun protection arsenal inferior to products sold in Europe. Luckily, lobby groups have no influence over international shipping. [NYT]
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