Reid Stowe
William Reid Stowe is an American visual artist and mariner. Stowe grew up around sailboats on the East Coast, sailing on the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans in his late teens and early twenties. By age 26, he had built two of his own sailboats with the help of his family and friends. Stowe subsequently sailed to the Antarctic with his schooner Anne in 1986 and completed a 194-day journey without touching land in 1999.
In 2010 Stowe completed a more extensive ocean voyage, entitled 1000 Days at Sea: The Mars Ocean Odyssey—a journey that commenced on April 21, 2007, from the 12th St. Pier, Hoboken, New Jersey. Stowe was the principal designer and builder of the Anne, a 70 ft, 60-ton gaff-rigged schooner which he sailed on this voyage. The purpose of the enterprise was to remain on the open ocean, without resupply or pulling into any harbor, for a period of one thousand days, along with some other goals that were not met, such as circumnavigating the globe four times. The single circumnavigation involved active management of a sailboat under varying weather conditions, with continuous wear and tear of equipment on the schooner, although the schooner was not always under full sail.
On June 17, 2010, Stowe sailed the schooner Anne up the Hudson River, accompanied by Sail Magazine's Executive Editor Charles Doane, and docked in New York. The total voyage duration claimed by Stowe was 1,152 days, a potential record for the longest continuous sea voyage without resupply or stepping on land. Upon landing at Pier 81 in Manhattan, he was met by family and friends, by his then girlfriend Soanya Ahmad—who had accompanied him for the first quarter of the journey—and their toddler son, as well as by the press.
Childhood
Reid Stowe was born January 6, 1952, near Moses Lake, Washington to Harry and Anne Stowe; and is the oldest of six siblings. His father, an officer in the United States Air Force, was posted to many parts of the world during that time and usually his family travelled with him. Growing up, Reid spent three years in Germany, two years in the Philippines, plus state-side tours in Mississippi, Illinois, Arizona, and Virginia. Traveling notwithstanding, the family generally spent summers with Anne Stowe's father, who had constructed a beach cottage on the Intracoastal Waterway near Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina. Anne's father and uncles frequently built and rebuilt portions of the home, and built small craft for use on the waterway. It was during these summer interludes that Reid absorbed carpentry, and, during his high school years with his younger brother Wave, Stowe built fiberglass surf boards. He and his brother employed workshops that his family maintained in various winter residences to complete their work after school.Early voyages
Reid Stowe initially pursued studies in the arts, enrolling in the University of Arizona, where he took up painting and sculpture. During his late teens, Stowe visited Hawaii in the summer to surf. During one of these Hawaiian excursions, when Stowe was nineteen, he fell in with Craige Fostvedt, who had invested some of his college funds to purchase a small sailing vessel. Invited to accompany him on an extended sail through the South Pacific to New Zealand, Stowe was obliged to obtain a passport, for which he needed a copy of his birth certificate. Years later, Stowe recalled to interviewer Harold Channer that his parents could very well have refused to send him the certificate and instead could have insisted on his return to school. That they chose otherwise, Stowe regards as a life-affirming experience, the tacit parental support giving him confidence to proceed. The South Pacific trip was Stowe's first experience with open ocean sailing, for which he acquired a passion.Following his South Pacific voyage, Stowe returned to his grandfather's residence in Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina, where he spent eight months constructing a and catamaran named Tantra, specifically for open ocean sailing. During its construction, he was visited by a Dutchman—whom he had first met on his South Pacific voyage—who persuaded Stowe to take the catamaran across the North Atlantic to the Netherlands. The two embarked on their journey to the Netherlands in June, 1973. After their arrival, Reid Stowe continued on a solo voyage which took him to Africa, a second Atlantic crossing, a trip to Brazil and the Amazon, returning to the United States in 1976. In his 2003 interview with Harold Channer, Stowe claimed that the catamaran Tantra was "the smallest boat to cross the Atlantic Ocean twice," though on closer reading it appears that a smaller boat has made the round-trip crossing as early as the nineteenth century. In 1880–1881, George P. Thomas and Frederick Norman navigated their dory Little Western from Gloucester, Massachusetts, to Cowes, England, in June 1880, stayed in England for nearly one year, and returned to America the following June.
Construction of the ''Anne'' (originally named ''Tantra Schooner'')
Following his return to the United States, Stowe's thoughts turned to the construction of a vessel well suited to extended voyages. He was particularly impressed with gaff-rigged schooners, which he felt represented a culmination of craft and technique for sailing vessels. In 1976, he took up residence in the North Carolina beach cottage of his maternal grandfather, and with extensive help from his mother's family, his father—now a retired Colonel—and his siblings, Reid Stowe began the construction of a sailing vessel designed after late nineteenth-century American gaff-rigged fishing schooners, prevalent from the 1880s to the 1900s. The completed design called for a 60-ton, two-masted gaff-rigged vessel, 70 ft in length with a beam. Unlike the nineteenth century antecedent, however, Stowe and his family employed Ferralite over steel wire mesh for the hull, with interior spaces finished in Caribbean hardwood supplied largely from debris thrown up by Hurricane David. In an interview with Harold Channer, Stowe likened the hull to a sealed steel and fiberglass bottle. Additionally, electricity for computers and communication equipment is generated from wind, solar, and water motion generators. Stowe, his family, and friends of the family, were engaged in building the craft over the next eighteen months, completing the work in 1978. The shipyard was entirely confined to the beach cottage property of his grandfather. Named Tantra Schooner at launch, Stowe established the ship as his home, sailing it originally to the Caribbean with his then wife, Iris and baby daughter Viva, "Voyages with the ''Anne''
The Caribbean and Antarctica
According to Bobrow, Stowe initially sailed the Tantra Schooner as a charter boat, but indirectly noted the possibility of extended voyaging even in the early eighties: "The charter accommodations are fabricated so that when extra quarters are not necessary, that space is set up to be a cargo hold — the intent being to make Tantra Schooner totally self-supporting." In this early description of the vessel and her crew, Bobrow reported: "Reid and Iris are a delightful, spiritual couple. Their boat reflects their ingenuity, creativity, and joy of life."Renamed the Anne in honor of his mother and her family, Stowe took the schooner to Antarctic waters in 1986 with a crew of eight, his first long-term trial with the vessel. For five months, Stowe and his crew sailed the waters around the Antarctic Peninsula and the South Shetland Islands. Stowe navigated into ice packs and claimed winds of up to. Later, Stowe told Nik Kleinberg of ESPN: "You're geared up like an ice man, goggles, everything, not a bit of skin exposed. We had a gust of wind that blew the boat completely over." To combat boredom, the crew "fought the lack of sensory stimulation with plastic filters that allowed people to bathe in different colored lights, and a 'bag of tricks' that included scented herbs and spices, stones, religious artifacts, pebbles, sand, and other items that stimulated the senses and kindled fond memories of home."
It was during this voyage that Stowe began seriously considering a trip of extremely long duration. Author Albert A. Harrison characterized these circa 1990 plans in his 2001 book, Spacefaring: The Human Dimension. "The Anne, long and displacing sixty tons, would set forth with a crew of six to eight and three years worth of provisions. For a thousand days they would sail outside of normal trade routes and without entering port. The crew would consist of scientists who would study weather, water, and atmospheric pollution, and ozone depletion in remote and little-documented regions of the world. Stowe hoped to conduct field tests of communication satellites, water purification systems and other equipment potentially useful for exploring Mars." Later, Stowe, with Harrison, authored the paper, "One thousand days non-stop at sea – Lessons for a mission to Mars" outlining a "1000-day voyage without touching land or receiving supplies from other craft. The goals of this expedition include the evaluation of equipment, supplies, and humans under conditions of isolation and confinement that will resemble some of those of the initial Mars voyage."
The Port of New York
In the fall of 1997, Stowe began using Pier 63 as a base of operations, located in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, New York City at a marina operated by John Krevey. He promoted his one thousand days voyage in earnest, calling it the "1000 Days at Sea: The Mars Ocean Odyssey," and one news article at the time suggested a launch date of 1999. It would be eight years, and one marriage later, before Stowe found sufficient funding and media support for the project. In the intervening time, Stowe made his home on board the Anne, used Pier 63 as his address, and undertook preliminary trips with Laurence Guillem, whom he had married in 1999. By 2001, the couple was stocking up on provisions for the planned 1000-day voyage.In 2006, the construction of a new park along the Hudson River forced the owner of the maritime barge at Pier 63—where Reid had kept his schooner Anne—to relocate to Pier 66. This caused the move of the schooner Anne to the 12th St. Pier across the river in Hoboken, on the New Jersey side, from which Reid eventually embarked on his epic voyage.