Up until a year ago, Soanya Ahmad’s experience out in open sea consisted of a couple of days on a Carnival Cruise to the Caribbean. Then, last year, the young photographer with a degree in Maritime Technology took swimming classes at the Y, wrapped all her clothes in plastic garbage bags, and joined Reid Stowe in preparing for his 20-year dream: to break the record for continuous days at sea.
On Saturday, April 21, Ahmad and Stowe will depart on their voyage from Hoboken’s Shipyard Marina. They do not plan to step foot on land again until the year 2010.
Water, water everywhere
Water’s ability to stimulate the flow of self-reflection has been documented in some of history’s great literature. Joseph Conrad’s “Journey into the Heart of Darkness” and Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” describe the parallel physical and psychological journeys of man in water. They are experiences that leave those with “land legs” in awe.
If completed, Ahmad and Stowe’s trip promises to be similarly awe-inspiring. The pair will circumnavigate the globe without stopping to rest, restock or refuel once. While the thought of traveling without setting foot in a single country may be an exercise in futility for some, Ahmad doesn’t think she’ll miss out.
“I figure I can do that at some other point,” she said, adding that she had already traveled to parts of Europe. “It would be nice to see [other countries] and be immersed in other cultures, but this is not about that. It’s not about an outward journey. It’s about a journey inward.”
For Stowe it is a journey that he has spent over two decades preparing to make.
Captain and crew
Ahmad and Stowe met while she was photographing the ships along New York’s West Side piers four years ago. The daughter of immigrants from Guyana, Ahmad was raised in Queens and became enamored of the ships she would see along Manhattan’s waterfront.
One day she stopped to ask if she could take pictures of him and his schooner named Anne. The rest, the couple hopes, will soon be history.
Originally from North Carolina, Stowe has spent his life traveling the globe, first as the son of an Air Force officer, and later as a sailor. (It was his father who taught him how to sail and instilled in him his passion for the sea).
He and Ahmad will be the only crew on the ship for the entire voyage.
Stowe’s ship, a 60-ton, 70-foot gaff-rigged schooner, has been docked at Hoboken’s Shipyard Marina since January, treating passers-by to a site that has not graced the city’s waterfront for many years.
According to Stowe, the Anne (which was named after his mother) is the same type of ship that brought cargo in and out of Hoboken’s ports in the 1800s.
Stowe and his family built the ship themselves in 1978. Stowe and Ahmad both have family in New York, but fate and fluke brought them to Hoboken.
“It happened by accident,” Ahmad explained. “Pier 63 in Chelsea was closed for construction and no boats were allowed. It just so happened we moved across the river.”
Fully stocked
Armed with 1,200 gallons of water, 2,000 pounds of coal, lots of pasta, rice, and bean sprouts that they plan to grow to make salads, the team are making last-minute adjustments and acquisitions before their departure. At first glance “down below” on the Anne, one might doubt the team’s preparation. The ship’s front room looks like the floating version of your grandmother’s attic, replete with the musty smell.
It is overstocked with boxes and cartons wrapped in trash bags, tied with rope (for easy handling, so that one hand is always free to hold onto something, Stowe explains) and labeled with masking tape. To get through the room and into the captain’s quarters, you have to crawl across a wooden board that is laid upon even more boxes.
But there is a method to the apparent madness. Stowe pulls out a detailed inventory map of the room. Every single thing is accounted for, including an industrial-sized amount of parmigiano reggiano cheese. “I was loading this ship 10 years ago,” Stowe said.
“And he was eating as he was loading,” Ahmad added, laughing.
In addition to the rations they already have, they also plan on catching rainwater and fish, said Stowe. The Anne also has a very important and expensive collection of medical supplies and communications equipment, including a satellite phone for updating the pair’s website.
Almost everything, including the sails, were donated.
Stowe said he couldn’t even begin to put a dollar value on all the rations and supplies they had gathered. “I don’t think that way,” he said.
Mission to Mars
He looks like what you’d think a guy who sailed across the Pacific at the age of 19 would look like: tall and lean, with wispy hair and crinkly blue eyes and a face weathered by years at sea. He and Ahmad have an air of being completely at peace with themselves and the world, and you might think that if anyone could make this trip, it would be them.
Open sea and outer space are both more of a notion than a tangible reality to most people. But for Reid Stowe, conquering either is a similar journey. He calls the voyage he will undertake in the next three years the “Mars Ocean Odyssey” because the isolation, physical challenges and length of the journey are comparable to those that might be experienced on a voyage to Mars.
“Our ability to be able to depart on this voyage is the most noble of human endeavors,” he remarked. He motioned to all the provisions he had stocked. “This is a real spaceship,” he said.
Stowe sees himself as a real-life adventurer and explorer, something, he said, this country is lacking these days. “America is sorely in need of new cultural heroes,” he said, lamenting that sports and movie stars are the icons for these generations. “A real explorer is significant to man’s history – men who could figure out what to do with boats at sea – not sports stars,” he said.
The present record for continuous days in open water is held by Jon Sanders, from Australia, who spent 657 days from 1986-1988.
Stowe and Ahmad hope to accomplish 1000 days. They will sail east across the North Atlantic Ocean, south past the equator, then west to the coast of Brazil. While in the South Atlantic Ocean, they will direct the voyage in a heart-shaped pattern, as an artistic statement.
Packing for more than just a three-hour tour
So what do you pack for three years at sea?
For entertainment, Ahmad and Stowe have plenty of books, an IPOD with over 400 gigabytes of memory (he likes acid jazz, she likes classic rock), writing equipment (she plans to write poetry and narratives, he will write a book on yoga out at sea), plenty of digital cameras and three laptops for updating the website, and equipment to record the music that the two like to compose.
“They are songs of the sea, in a poetic style,” said Stowe.
The dedicated yogis have not packed a treadmill or an exercise bike. They plan on using yoga, and the balancing act of living on the ship as means to keep fit.
And what kind of clothes do you pack for three years?
“Everything,” Ahmad said. “You pack for all different conditions, or to entertain yourself. The only things I didn’t pack were office clothes.”
Upon reflection, she also adds, “maybe not high heels, either.”
Captain Reid Stowe and his sole mate, Soanya Ahmad, will depart from the North Hoboken Marina on 12th Street and Sinatra Drive on Saturday April 21 at 3 p.m. Festivities for the launch party begin at 1 p.m. For more information on their voyage and their send-off ceremony, go to www.1000days.net.