Stowe Away

Remember 56-year-old Reid Stowe — hero to some, whack job to others — who is bobbing around the world’s oceans as you read this, attempting to set a record for the longest consecutive time at sea? If you do, you’ll probably also remember our February report that his first mate on the "Mars Ocean Odyssey", 24-year-old Soanya Ahmad, jumped ship 306 days into the planned-1,000 day voyage as Stowe’s homebuilt 70-ft schooner Anne neared Australia. The official explanation was extreme seasickness.

Well, it turns out it wasn’t seasickness . . . it was morning sickness! Despite Ahmad’s claims in interviews that the couple were practicing safe sex because they didn’t want to get pregnant during the trip, nature found a way. In mid-July, Ahmad gave birth to a boy she named Darshen.

Young Darshen should be well into the walking, talking stage by the time he meets Pop. Having crossed the 500-day halfway mark in August, Stowe still plans to stay away from land until sometime in early 2010.

If you’re wondering (as we did) why anyone would want to set a 1,000-day record for being afloat, a couple of stories that surfaced before the birth of Darshen might shed some light. One New York Daily News story claimed that Stowe is a deadbeat dad, “running from nearly $10,000 owed in child support” for a daughter from his first marriage. Another online source claimed Stowe had pled guilty to importing 30,000 lbs of pot from the Caribbean to Maine via sailboat in the mid-’80s, and spent 12 months in a federal penitentiary for it. Compared to that, bobbing around by yourself for another year and a half probably doesn’t seem so bad.

Well, okay, he’s not exactly bobbing. Stowe was recently alerted the fact that his erratic course aboard Anne has resulted in a nearly complete outline of a whale. Inspired by his previous attempt to ‘draw’ the outline of a sea turtle in the Atlantic, Stowe altered course to finish the drawing. He believes “if this oceanic, satellite-verified drawing of the whale can be seen by many caring people, maybe that will help the movement toward saving the whales.”