Reid Stowe

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William Reid Stowe (b. January 7, 1952) is an American artist and mariner, and the remaining participant of 1000 Days at Sea: The Mars Ocean Odyssey, a contemplated one thousand-day voyage which commenced on April 21, 2007 from Pier 12, Hoboken, New Jersey. The mission, funded by thousands of donated dollars,^[1] had the aim of remaining in the open ocean, outside of contact with supporting ports, for a period of one thousand days, emulating in some respects interplanetary voyages such as those contemplated to the planet Mars. Similarities with interplanetary voyages and the name of the expedition notwithstanding, there is no connection between Stowe's project and the major space agencys' research on humans coping with long interplanetary voyages,^[2] though Stowe claims to maintain personal contacts with a number of present and former NASA personnel.^[3] "A representative for NASA says she doesn't know anyone at the agency who is following Stowe's mission", reported Eliza Strickland in Wired Online. ^[4] Stowe and Ahmad's trip has been criticized by many other sailors who consider it ill-conceived, dangerous and irresponsible.^[5]

Stowe is the head of the expedition and the principal designer and builder of the Anne, the 70 ft. (21.3 m.) 60 ton (54,400 kg) gaff-rigged schooner which Stowe is sailing on the voyage.^[6][7][2] Soanya Ahmad, Stowe's girlfriend, a sailing novice with no offshore experience had been the first mate and the other principal participant in the voyage. She departed the vessel near Perth, Australia on February 22, 2008. Stowe plans to continue the voyage solo.^[8]

Contents 1 Childhood 2 Early voyages 2.1 Construction of the Anne (née Tantra Schooner) 3 Voyages with the Anne 3.1 The Caribbean and Antarctica 3.2 The Port of New York 3.2.1 Voyage of the Turtle: Prelude to '1000 Days at Sea' 3.2.2 Subsequent attempts 3.3 The 1000-day voyage 3.3.1 Mission planning and execution 3.3.2 Significant events 3.3.3 Mission status 4 See also 5 External links 6 References

[edit] Childhood

Reid Stowe was born in 1952 in Washington state to Harry and Anne Stowe;^[9] and is the oldest of six siblings. His father, an officer in the United States Air Force, was posted to many parts of the world during that time and usually his family travelled with him. Growing up, Reid spent three years in Germany, two years in the Philippines, plus state-side tours in Mississippi, Illinois, Arizona, and Virginia. Traveling notwithstanding, the family generally spent summers with Anne Stowe's father, who had constructed a beach cottage on the Intracoastal Waterway near Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina.^[3] Anne's father and uncles frequently built and rebuilt portions of the home, and built small craft for use on the waterway. It was during these summer interludes that Reid absorbed carpentry, and, during his high school years with his younger brother Wave, Stowe built fiber glass surf boards. He and his brother employed work shops that his family maintained in various winter residences to complete their work after school.^[3][10]

[edit] Early voyages

Reid Stowe initially pursued studies in the arts, enrolling in the University of Arizona, where he took up painting and sculpture.^[9] During his late teens, Stowe visited Hawaii in the summer to surf. During one of these Hawaiian excursions, when Stowe was nineteen, he fell in with Craige Fostvedt,^[11] who had invested some of his college funds to purchase a small sailing vessel. Invited to accompany him on an extended sail through the South Pacific to New Zealand^[12], Stowe was obliged to obtain a passport, for which he needed a copy of his birth certificate. Years later, Stowe recalled to interviewer Hudson Channer that his parents could very well have refused to send him the certificate and insist on his return to school. That they chose not to Stowe regards as a life-affirming experience, the tacit parental support giving him confidence to proceed. The South Pacific trip was Stowe's first experience with open ocean sailing, for which he acquired a passion.^[3]

It was during this trip that Stowe met Bernard Moitessier. Moitessier had around him a community of like-minded young mariners who had a passion for long distance sailing in small craft, without motors, or electronic navigation equipment. Stowe spent some time in this community, learning sailing, boat-building, how to shoot the stars with a sextant and celestial navigation, as commonly practiced by nineteenth century deck officers. It was also from this community that Stowe learned attitudes of self-reliance, minimizing dependence on outside infrastructure. It was during this period of study with the community surrounding Moitessier that Reid Stowe thought he could conduct a life of extensive, often solitary, open ocean sailing.^[3]

Following his South Pacific voyage, Stowe returned to his grandfather's residence in Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina, where, over a period of eight months, he constructed a 27-foot (8.2 m) catamaran,^[3][9] named Tantra,^[13] for open ocean sailing. During its construction, he was visited by a Dutch national he had met during his time with Moitessier who persuaded Stowe to take the catamaran across the North Atlantic to Holland. The two embarked in June, 1973 to the Netherlands. After their arrival, Reid Stowe continued on a solo voyage which took him to Africa, a second Atlantic crossing, a trip to Brazil and the Amazon, returning to United States in 1976. In his 2003 interview with Hudson Channer, Stowe characterized the catamaran as "the smallest boat to cross the Atlantic Ocean twice",^[3] though smaller boats have made round trip crossings as early as the nineteenth century. In particular, George P. Thomas and Frederick Norman navigated their 16 ft 7 in (5.1 m) dory Little Western from Gloucester, Massachusetts to Cowes England in June 1880, returning the following June.^{[14] [15] [16]}

[edit] Construction of the Anne (née Tantra Schooner)

Following his return to the United States, Stowe's thoughts turned to the construction of a vessel well-suited to extended voyages. He was particularly impressed with gaff-rigged schooners, which he felt represented a culmination of craft and technique for sailing vessels.^[3] In 1976, he took up residence in the North Carolina beach cottage of his mother's father, and, with extensive help from her family, his father, now a retired Colonel, and his siblings, commenced execution of a design based on late nineteenth century American gaff-rigged fishing schooners, a vessel that was prevalent from the 1880s to the 1900s. The completed design called for a 60 ton, two-masted schooner-rigged vessel, 70 feet (21 m) in length with a 16-foot (4.9 m) beam. Unlike the nineteenth century antecedent, however, Stowe and his family employed Feralite over steel wire mesh for the hull,^[17][13] with interior spaces finished in Caribbean hard wood supplied largely from debris thrown up by Hurricane David.^[18] In an interview with Harold Hudson Channer, Stowe likened the hull to a sealed steel and fiberglass bottle.^[3] Additionally, electricity for computers and communication equipment is generated from wind, solar, and water motion generators.^[3] Stowe, his family, and friends of the family, were engaged in building the craft over the next eighteen months, completing the work in 1978. The shipyard was entirely confined to the beach cottage property of his mother's father. Named Tantra Schooner, on its launch, ^[19] Stowe established the ship as his home, sailing it originally to the Caribbean with his then wife, Iris and baby daughter Viva, "[finishing] the interiors en route and in the island." Author Jill Bobrow, in her 1982 Classic Yacht Interiors attributed some of the interior handiwork to Iris: "a beautiful walnut inlaid with enamel."^[19]

[edit] Voyages with the Anne

[edit] The Caribbean and Antarctica

According to Bobrow, Stowe initially sailed the Tantra Schooner as a charter boat, but indirectly noted the possibility of extended voyaging even in the early eighties: "The charter accommodations are fabricated so that when extra quarters are not necessary, that space is set up to be a cargo hold — the intent being to make Tantra Schooner totally self-supporting."^[19] In this early description of the vessel and her crew, Bobrow reported: "Reid and Iris are a delightful, spiritual couple. Their boat reflects their ingenuity, creativity, and joy of life."^[19]

Renamed the Anne in honor of his mother and her family,^[9][7] Stowe took the schooner to Antarctic waters in 1986 with a crew of eight, his first long-term trial with the vessel.^[10] For five months, Stowe and his crew sailed the waters around the Antarctic Peninsula and the South Shetland Islands.^[20] Stowe navigated into ice packs and experienced winds of up to 110 miles per hour (177 km/h). Later, Stowe told Nik Kleinberg of ESPN: "You're geared up like an ice man, goggles, everything, not a bit of skin exposed. We had a gust of wind that blew the boat completely over."^[10] To combat boredom, the crew "fought the lack of sensory simulation with plastic filters that allowed people to bathe in different colored lights, and a 'bag of tricks' that included scented herbs and spices, stones, religious artifacts, pebbles, sand, and other items that stimulated the senses and kindled fond memories of home."^[21]

It was during this voyage that Stowe began seriously considering a trip of extremely long duration.^[10] Author Albert A. Harrison characterized these circa 1990 plans in his 2001 book, Spacefaring: The Human Dimension ^[21] "The Anne, twelve meters long and displacing sixty tons, would set forth with a crew of six to eight (the same size as an initial Mars crew under some scenarios) and three years worth of provisions. For a thousand days they would sail outside of normal trade routes and without entering port. The crew would consist of scientists who would study weather, water, and atmospheric pollution, and ozone depletion in remote and little-documented regions of the world. Stowe hoped to conduct field tests of communication satellites, water purification systems and other equipment potentially useful for exploring Mars." Later, Stowe, with Harrison, authored the paper, "One thousand days non-stop at sea - Lessons for a mission to Mars" outlining a "1000-day voyage without touching land or receiving supplies from other craft. The goals of this expedition include the evaluation of equipment, supplies, and humans under conditions of isolation and confinement that will resemble some of those of the initial Mars voyage."^[22]

[edit] The Port of New York

In the fall of 1997, Stowe began using Pier 63 as a base of operations, located in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, New York City at a marina operated by John Krevy.^[23][24] He promoted his one thousand days voyage in earnest, calling it the "1000 Days at Sea, The Mars Ocean Odyssey", and news articles at the time suggested a launch date of 1998.^[25] It would be nine years, and one marriage later, before Stowe found sufficient funding and media support for the project.^[26] In the intervening time, Stowe made his home on board the Anne, used Pier 63 as his address, and undertook preliminary trips with Laurence Guillem, whom he had married in 1999.

[edit] Voyage of the Turtle: Prelude to '1000 Days at Sea'

Stowe's prelude to the present voyage was undertaken in 1999, when he and his new bride, Laurence Guillem, voyaged the South Atlantic Ocean for 194 days in the Anne, an expedition which Guillem dubbed "The Odyssey of the Sea Turtle."^[26] Stowe's intent during this preliminary voyage was to shape a course literally in the shape of a turtle. Of this choice, Stowe said: "There's also something to be said about not racing around all the time. So this voyage was sort of an antidote to our speed-obsessed society. And the turtle is also a reminder about endangered species and the environment. I'm sure it's going to be interpreted in different ways."^[27] The voyage lasted from June 4, to December 17, 1999, with no major mishap, though it had its tribulations. The Anne suffered engine failure under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge,^[12] aging sailcloth limited the precision of Stowe's navigation — the turtle was neither as large nor as complete as he had originally hoped — and a brush with Hurricane Lenny on their return leg hampered their return to the port of New York.^[27] Still, he and his sailing mate had spent over a half year out of sight of land, and, during that time plotted a turtle 1,900 nautical miles (3,500 km) long by 1,400 nautical miles (2,600 km) wide. "On the map you see our day-to-day points like a constellation," Stowe said of it. "It's a turtle drawn there, clearer than any constellation in the sky."^[27]

[edit] Subsequent attempts

Stowe and Guillem undertook a second exercise in January 2001, a voyage to Trinidad in which the Anne encountered severe weather off Bermuda.^[28] The ship knocked over on its side perhaps once, perhaps three times, in high seas, but righted itself. Having injured her jaw in the mishap, it was the last significant voyage that Guillem undertook with Stowe.^[29][28] Of her reluctance to return to sea, she said of him: "J'aime Reid, mais lui c'est un poisson et moi non." ("I love Reid, but he is a fish and I am not.")^[30]

In the six years since this second exercise, there have been a number of sailing dates announced, but not undertaken.^[12] Funding issues, lack of media sponsorships, changes in crew commitment, are all reasons Stowe gave for launch cancellations. Such delays gave rise to sponsor unrest and questioning of motives. "I've given him nearly $7,000 worth of food,"reported Danny Kadouri, of Brooklyn-based Kadouri International Foods. "I've met him a few times and I've been on his boat, but I'm no sailor." he said to the New York Daily News. "I think he's genuine but, honestly, I don't know. I hope he's not pulling my leg." "Of our contributors, I think most of them have seen what we are doing and our hard work and they're still expecting us to go." Stowe reported the Daily News. "We've been planning this project for ten years and most of them are sympathetic."^[31]

[edit] The 1000-day voyage

Stowe departed on the 1000-day voyage on April 21, 2007 at 3:00 PM EDT from Pier 12, Hoboken New Jersey, witnessed by about 100 well-wishers, including his parents and his former wife, Laurence Guillem.^[32] The heavily ladened schooner passed through New York Harbor and into the open ocean by the evening of April 21.

[edit] Mission planning and execution

The departure put into execution plans that, in some respects, closely resembled those put forth by Stowe and Harrison in their 1992 paper.^[22] The name and duration, the concept of keeping away from sight of land, the physical and spiritual challenges of isolation, all echo concepts that were put forth in the fifteen year old paper and reiterated in the departure press release.^[33] The scientific component that had been expressed in the 1992 paper, the study of weather, water, atmospheric pollution and ozone depletion in little-documented regions of the world, has not been realized due to lack of equipment, as indicated by periodic entries in the voyage's log,^[34] and in the general awareness of the world at large. Noted Soanya Ahmad in the Day 199 blog entry: "I'm surprised at how cool the water temperature is despite the fact that the sun warms the air right up. We don't have a way to measure water temperature, but our clock has a temperature reading on it for the air."^[35] The Day 279 entry documents Stowe's grasp of the nature of ozone depletion as that of a lay person when he writes: "I wonder if the hole in the ozone layer is down here and you have to avoid the lovely sun. I have been carrying on with the sun chastising it for not coming out and shining enough, but once I got burned, I wondered if we had to hide from it? Who knows about the ozone hole?"^[36]

[edit] Significant events

Since its departure, the voyage has incurred three incidents, two near the outset of the voyage. On April 25, 2007, the schooner ventured near a US Navy missile firing trial that was being conducted off the New Jersey coast. After United States Coast Guard personnel alerted the schooner, the crew diverted their course with no further mishap. A second, more serious mishap occurred on May 6th 2007 when the schooner ran into a container ship that left the schooner's bowsprit heavily damaged, though the hull and the remainder of the ship was unscathed.^[37] Stowe was able to make a replacement, albeit shortened, bowsprit from less-damaged portions.^[34] Since these incidents, the vessel spent much of the second half of 2007 in the Southern Atlantic, passing the tip of Africa in mid December, 2007.

The most significant incident occurred on February, 22, 2008, when Stowe's companion, Soanya Ahmad decided to leave the voyage.^[38] She disembarked from the schooner off Rottnest Island, near Perth, Western Australia.^[39] Members from the Royal Perth Yacht Club, including Jon Sanders,^[40] rendezvoused with the Anne around 1800 local time (+9 UTC) and assisted with Ms. Ahmad departure, who arrived in Perth around 2100 local time.^[41] She had been suffering from chronic seasickness since November,^[8][40] and, according to Joe Barello of the New York City-based support team, had been planning to leave the schooner for five weeks, though reluctant to leave Stowe behind.^[42] Ahmad's departure left Stowe without a crew and compromised an original tenet of the voyage, "...to leave the land and all support, sail for 1,000 days, non-stop at sea without receiving help, to live at sea, to be healthy, to send back good messages and have the whole world follow the voyage and understand the importance of it..."^[33] Mr. Stowe intends to complete the mission plan alone. According to The Age, the schooner Anne was to maintain a position beyond sight of land during the transfer so Mr Stowe could continue his attempt to break records.^[8] Mr. Barello reported to the Daily News, however, that: "They're not going to go to port, but they will be within sight of land. They wanted to do it further out, but there are some strong gale-like winds."^[42] Jon Sanders, the current record holder for longest time at sea, was asked in an interview whether Reid could do it. Sanders, who was also a member of Soanya's rescue party responded - "I think the boat by the look of it will stay in one piece. It won't break any records."[3].

Shortly after Mr. Stowe dropped off his companion, the press revealed that he is a convicted drug smuggler and owes back child support. Adam Nichols, of the NY Daily News, reported that Mr. Stowe is a “deadbeat dad running from nearly $10,000 owed in child support”. The article states that “New York's Department of State issued a warrant for Stowe in 2005, claiming he owed $11,581" [4]. According to an article at Gothamist.com, Reid Stowe also served some time in a federal penitentiary in the early 1990s after he was caught smuggling 15 tons of marijuana aboard his boat [5].

[edit] Mission status

Currently, the schooner Anne is east-northeast of New Zealand in the South Pacific Ocean. Stowe maintains contact with its New York City based support team via an intermittent GPS satellite monitoring system, with voice communications to its New York City base via an Iridium phone. Stowe employs maritime VHF transceivers for ship-to-ship communications. Volunteers maintain a web site so that the general public can follow the progress of the voyage. The web site features daily tracking of the schooner's position through the GPS system.^[34]

[edit] See also

• Robin Lee Graham
• Jon Sanders
• Roz Savage
• Joshua Slocum
• Captain Ahab

[edit] External links

• Home page of 1000 Days at Sea
• John Doswell's account of Anne's January 2001 trip to Bermuda.
• Sailing Anarchy, A discussion forum critical of the expedition.
• 1000 Days of Hell Blog, A blog that takes a critical look at Reid Stowe while lampooning the "Mars Ocean Odyssey" site.
• 1000 Days of Reality Blog, A blog that takes a critical look at Reid Stowe's checkered past and run-ins with the law.

[edit] References