Adventure Sailing - No 'Land Ahoy!' for 1000 Days
by Sail-World Cruising/Adam Nichols, Daily News on 1 Aug 2007
The Anne Crew - 1000 days without seeing land - Reid Stowe and Soanya Ahmad SW
Two sailors set out 100 days ago from New York on a unusual mission – they plan to stay at sea and out of sight of land for 1000 days – in my language, that's just about two years and nine months.
They've so far been doodling around in the Atlantic, but their intention to sail around Cape Horn (without sighting it) against wind and current is a laudable and brave one, so theirs will be an interesting adventure to watch.
However, they'd better keep a better watch keeping system, as Adam Nichols' story for the
Daily News , recounted here, demonstrates:
They've sailed through vicious storms and blistering heat, and even limped away from a midnight collision with a freighter.
Today is the 100th day Capt. Reid Stowe and his first - and only - mate Soanya Ahmad have spent at sea without even a glimpse of land.
The pair set sail from New York Harbor in April for a 1,000-day nonstop odyssey on a homemade schooner named Anne.
They've now crossed the equator into the South Atlantic, off the coast of West Africa.
But their plan to keep out of sight of land until their return to New York was almost sunk when they collided with another boat on day 15.
'I heard a loud bang and some scraping and, when I opened the hatch, I saw the stern of a freighter passing by,' said Stowe on a blog the pair write from sea. 'We were lucky to be alive.'
The crash smashed Anne's bowsprit - the nose of the ship that holds the foremast. The boat drifted for a week while emergency repairs were made.
'The boat was still able to sail,' said Ahmad, who is from Queens. 'It wouldn't balance as well, but we could make it work.'
The Anne has since survived torrential downpours, 20-foot waves and sunshine so hot it blistered the deck's varnish.
Stowe and Ahmad have been eating flying fish that leap onto the deck and drinking rainwater in addition to the supplies they left New York with.
They have gotten used to being without any other human contact.
'It's just Soanya and I, and we haven't seen another person,' said Stowe.
'There's nothing but sea and sky. By now, it doesn't matter how many days. One day merges into the next, wave into wave, cloud into cloud.'
They plan to sail around South America's Cape Horn and to the Antarctic, as they try to beat the record for a continuous seagoing journey for a sailing team by 400 days.
anichols@nydailynews.com
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