Longest Non-Stop Sea Voyage In History
The longest continuous sea voyage ever undertaken was by William Reid Stowe, a visual artist and mariner who grew up watching vessels on the East Coast and sailed the Pacific and Atlantic oceans in his teens and twenties. He also built his own sailboats with the help of family and friends.
His trip lasted 1152 days and began from the 12th Street pier in Hoboken, New Jersey, USA, on April 21, 2007 and ended three years later on June 17, 2010. Called ‘1000 Days at Sea: The Mars Ocean Odyssey’, it was inspired by the idea of a return voyage to the planet Mars and tested the limits of human endurance.
Stowe built his own sailing vessel for this voyage! He was impressed with gaff-rigged schooners, which he thought were a great combination of fine craft and technique.
Hence, he went to his grandfather’s North Carolina beach cottage and began to carve out the ship with his hands.
He wanted to build it like the 19th-century fishing schooners, which were quite common from the late 1800s to the 1900s.
However, he used Ferralite over steel wire mesh for the hull, with interiors made of Caribbean hardwood procured from debris brought by Hurricane David. He compared the hull to a sealed steel and fibreglass bottle.
Electricity for computers and communication equipment was produced from wind, solar and water motion generators.
The vessel took 18 months to complete and was called Tantra Schooner. It weighed 60 tons and was 21.3 m long and 4.88 m wide.
The vessel had to be robust as it was to remain in the open ocean without any resupplies or calling at any port for 1000 days, along with some other targets which were not met, such as circumnavigating the globe 4 times.
The latter was difficult to achieve as it involved managing a sailboat under different weather conditions while it suffered continuous wear and tear.
Stowe finally set sail on his vessel, which he renamed Anne, with 3 years’ worth of non-perishable items, dry fruits, nuts and a small bean sprout garden.
His girlfriend Soanya Ahmad joined him at the beginning of his journey; however, after 306 days at sea, she was evacuated by a rescue boat near Perth, Western Australia.
Ahmad thought she was seasick; however, it was actually morning sickness, and she gave birth to the couple’s son in New York. Stowe met the two-year-old Darshen and Soanya after his journey.
The couple’s 306 days spent together at sea are the longest time spent on the sea by a couple and also the longest time at sea by a woman.
The remaining 846 days spent by Stowe alone are also a record for the longest solo sea voyage without any resupplies.
The journey was perilous as the schooner was nearly hit by a frigate, which damaged its bowsprit, and on day 659, she was upended by a giant wave, leaving Stowe unconscious.
Stowe beat the record of 419 days at sea by an individual, earlier held by Jon Sanders of Australia.
Coincidentally, Sanders was among the crew who rescued his girlfriend Soanya when she was pregnant.
Sanders also had the record for the longest time at sea, which was 657 days, until it was broken by Stowe.
He also broke the record of 1057 days held by Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen after his vessel was stuck in ice during an attempted trip to the North Pole in 1893.
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Zahra Ahmed
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