Five lost at sea- Jesse Martin's new film

by Nancy Knudsen on 27 Jul 2009 If you are anywhere round Melbourne this weekend, you could do worse than going to the Greater Union, Russell Street, at 12.45pm on Sunday.

Showing will be the result of Jesse Martin's disastrous (his words) journey with a young crew who set off aboard the Kijana for a world circumnavigation in 2002.

If you need reminding about Jesse Martin, on 31 October 1999, in his yacht Lionheart, he completed his journey as the youngest person to sail solo, non stop and unassisted around the world. After 50,000 kms and 328 days at sea he returned home to Port Phillip Bay and a waiting crowd of twenty thousand onlookers.

(For those who are into records, Jesse Martin's record has NOT been broken by Californian Zac Sunderland, who did not complete the journey non-stop or unassisted - no problem there, Zac never intended to. Sail-World understands that Zac was so casual he didn't even get the World Racing Association to witness his start and finish, so he probably hasn't even officially beaten David Dick's earlier record.)

With the record under his belt there was no shortage of sponsors to sink a cool $2 million into the new venture. So the plan was that he and four friends would sail around the world on a new boat, the Kijana, in search of adventure and experience and in a bid to display the resilience and virtues of modern youth.

The trip was to be detailed on video, to end up with a 13 part television series. However, sailing alone was discovered to be the easy part by Martin, when the voyage ran into early trouble with seasickness, crew discord, and difficulties with producing enough footage of an adventure quality that pleased the sponsors.

The two female members of the crew departed after five months before they had even left Australian waters, and Jesse was left with his brother Beau, and Josh Schmidt his sailing and filming partner.

This didn't solve all the problems, and the voyage finally broke down completely when Jesse and Beau came to fisticuffs in Thailand.

'The reason it unravelled is that we wanted to have an adventure but we didn't realise that there had to be a business behind it. And they're two competing things,' Jess told the Age Newspaper. 'We were younger, there was stuff we didn't like about the world we were growing up in, and we were going to break free of that. And then the business side was pushing us to become part of that world.'

Jess also sees how he could have lead the crew better. On Lionheart, he'd learnt that he could handle most things alone. On Kijana, had he learnt how hard it could be to have responsibility for others.

Now, he can see he was too hard on his crew. 'I was non-caring, and I regret that totally. If I were back in that situation, I would deal with it differently.'

Jesse Martin, who disappeared to New Guinea after his record making voyage, is now resident in Melbourne.

5 Lost at Sea screens at Greater Union, Russell Street, at 12.45pm on Sunday. www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au