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Hello where is my boat
14:51 p.m. EDT Jul 31, 2003
It was more fun in the good old days. When enemy had high tech bombs, cool planes and black warships. They wore green tweed and gold stars and a battle called for intelligence and brains. These days however, what's a poor Navy General to do? Enemy hide out in Brooklyn apartments, rent a van at Manhattan Mini storage and blast a hole in Holland Tunnel. They rent an agriculture pest control one engine Cessna and land it right on top of our President. Or they row up to a Navy ship and blow a hole right through it.
-"Unzip your sweater!" yelled the Navy boys at poor Teddy as their black zodiac circled his yellow rowing boat. "Turn around, spread your legs, hands on your head!". Teddy tried to oblige balancing in the stormy waves of the North Atlantic coast.
Teddy had actually had enough excitement that day. His boat had flipped a few times and the rudder needed fixing. He spotted a fin cutting the waters next to him. Teddy wasn't aware there are white sharks patrolling the coast of North East US. He just figured the fin looked strange. Then he went into the water, to fix the rudder.
All the action had left Teddy with pain in his side. Spotting a vessel on the horizon, he thought to himself that a painkiller would be great. Then hell broke loose. US Navy dove under his boat, confiscated all his weapons - the knife and the flares - and then lifted Teddy onboard altogether. Before he could spell out "I'm not a terrorist" the game was over and his boat was gone.
He got to sleep on a hard birch in the hallway. Millions of thoughts running through his mind. The boat that his father had so lovingly devoted most his time to was lost. The expedition money, almost 100 Grand was gone, a serious blow to Teddy's 200 USD a month income back in Ukraine. His personal clothes, pictures, food, tech - all was lost by a single cut of the towing rope. Back on land, Teddy was handed the last piece of hope - the Argos tracker. The Marines had left the emergency beacon, but for some reason gone back for the Argos tracking unit before releasing his boat.
If Teddy had been an American rower there would have been CNN, ABC news, AP and Reuters raising hell right now. Teddy's papers were clear and he had all the right in the world to row out of US to France. Even the coastguard came over to see him off at Battery Park.
But Teddy is from Ukraine. Back at ExplorersWeb office in Manhattan, he already plans for a fresh start next year. He says he takes full responsibility for what happened and wishes no harm to the US Navy. He only hopes he'll be let back into the country next year to follow through on his adventure.
It was people like Teddy who once built America. They came from Europe on wooden boats and feared nothing. They made a country based on Freedom and Justice for all. We love that. We need to protect that. But more than our lives, we need to protect the American dream. The dream that if a single guy dreams up that he can row in a small boat all the way to France, he has the right to try.
Wednesday July 2 2003 at 1105 hrs East Coast Time Teddy Rezvoy left Manhattan for his Atlantic Ocean row. He was recreating the historic row by two American/Norwegians who in 1896 rowed from New York to Brest, France; along the, “Gulf Stream Route.” In 2001 Teddy successfully rowed the Atlantic Ocean, but from the opposite direction. Had he succeeded with his mission, Teddy would have become the third person in history to complete a return rowing trip on the Atlantic.
Image of Teddy at ExWeb office in NY courtesy of ExplorersWeb
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