Remember Reid Stowe? It was he who set out from New York last April with the young Soanya Ahmad as crew in an attempt to stay at sea, out of sight of land and with no stops for re-provisioning nor repair for 1,000 days. Sailing the home-built 60-foot ferro schooner Anne, he called the voyage the Mars Ocean Odyssey as 1,000 days is, he claims, the time it will take man to fly to Mars so he will experience the same deprivation as an astronaut. Apart, that is, from having an attractive female companion on board.

Well, all has changed now. After meandering around the Atlantic for several months he turned Anne’s bows east for the Cape of Good Hope and the Southern Ocean. Although fairly far north the couple still experienced bad weather and Soanya discovered that, except in calm weather, she was chronically seasick. So much so that as they closed Australia she asked to be dropped off.

So on day 307, still 113 days short of the existing ‘at sea’ record set by Jon Sanders during his non stop triple circumnavigations, Anne rendezvoused with Stuart Walton, General Manager of the Royal Perth Yacht Club and a grateful Soanya transferred back to terra firma whilst Reid turned his bows southward to continue his quest alone.