Dude! My Hero!

I first met Reid Stowe a few years ago in New York. I had been invited to sail with him on the schooner Anne which he was preparing to take around the world on an epic non-stop 1,000 day voyage which would not entail stopping at any harbour, anchorage, or making any landfall whatsoever. "Dude! My hero!"

On that first sail in New York's Hudson River we were barely off the dock when the engine alarms rang and the engine was shut down. Reid had forgotten to open the seacock that controlled the flow of seawater to the engine for cooling purposes. Bummer.
Subsequent exposure to Reid Stowe did nothing to dispel that first impression--he was the type of mariner who was forever getting into minor but quite nerve-wracking situations, a type known in the trade as "Captain Crunch"--usually on account of their abrupt docking maneuvres, but in a larger sense because they are hard on the equipment.

Every time I saw or heard more of him, though, he seemed to be doing things right. Dressed in a suit at the National Arts Club showing his artwork---abstract swirls painted on vast acres of old sails---he made his pitch for substantial donations. His companion, later his wife, Laurence, was a total hottie and gave him extra coolness points that he subsequently had to cash in when she left him after their honeymoon (90 days at sea tracing the shape of a sea turtle in the Southern Atlantic.) You can listen to various radio interviews here. For a while he was the darling of New York magazine, the striver's handbook.

So now he's again ready for the big one. He's been positioning it as a worthwhile preview of the trials and tribulations that a group of humans might go through should they be stuck together on, say, a manned trip to Mars. If only he could dial up 3 years' worth of weightlessness, he might have a point. He wanted a million dollars from NASA to help fund his expedition--this would help him provide live internet hookups from the boat to schoolrooms around the world plus keep him and the party in food and pencil erasers for that time (almost 3 years). Those poor schoolkids could watch him and the party slowly go mad and devour each other. They would be found, like Nathaniel Philbrick's poor sailors, nibbling on fingerbones and jabbering.

Originally he wanted a group of people to come with him, but now it's down to him and his new First Mate.
Bon Voyage, Captain.

Oh, in all that time he's barely got the schooner Anne off the damned dock......though in fairness, he did build the ship himself and sail her to the Antarctic where he wintered over one season. So his early years were good, just like Paul McCartney.