NEW FAIRFIELD, Conn.
August 19th 2003
Theodore Rezvoy's dream of rowing 2,913 miles from
New York City to Brest, France ended earlier this month in a stormy sea
200 miles east of the United States after a surprise encounter with an
American warship.
Rezvoy left July 2 from the Manhattan Yacht Club. On July 10, The USS
Doyle, a 3,600-ton guided missile frigate, made contact with Rezvoy's
rowboat after the small craft had already capsized twice in a strong
storm.
Rezvoy was resting in his cabin with a painful liver problem, when the
fast-moving missile carrier launched a manned rubber dinghy to
investigate him, he said.
"One of the members of the crew entered my boat," Rezvoy wrote in a
report to the London-based Ocean Rowing Society. "The officer asked me
if I had any armor or explosives. I pointed him to the knife, which was
attached to the side of the boat, and to the flares. He took both."
Rezvoy was taken aboard the warship, searched and given medical
assistance.
Rezvoy said although he had been devastated by the loss of "my boat and
dreams," he was grateful to the ship and its crew.
The 35-year-old Ukrainian, visiting his brother, Peter, 36, and
sister-in-law, Olga, in New Fairfield, was committed to building the
boat and becoming the third sailor to row the Atlantic alone in both
directions.
Rezvoy had already made a 67-day east-west solo crossing in 2001, from
the Canary Islands off the coast of West Africa to Barbados in the West
Indies.
Rezvoy's $60,000 boat featured a global-positioning system and a water
purification system, solar panels to power them and storage space for
food supplies and bottled water.
The hull for the 24-foot boat was shipped to New Fairfield from England.
Rezvoy finished building the craft in his relative's driveway.
"It is my intention to build a new boat and start again from New York on
June 6, 2004," Rezvoy said.
That date, he noted, would mark the 108th anniversary of the first of
only two double completed rows across the Atlantic to Europe by
Norwegians George Harbo and Gabriel Samuelson in 1896.
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