Sailor Determined to Conquer the Atlantic on a 12-Foot Raft

For four months, Steve Kurachi will eat raw fish and drink rainwater. His world will be a 12-foot raft surrounded by thousands of miles of deep blue ocean. Constant waves and a beating sun will be his companions, along with the occasional shark.

At 49, Kurachi is determined to complete a mission he’s failed on three other occasions: a solo voyage across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kurachi wants to sail from the Canary Islands, off the African coast, to Corpus Christi. He left Texas on Monday and planned to be on the water as soon as final preparations were completed. He doesn’t expect to hit land again until he reaches Texas.

Success would fulfill a boyhood dream.

“I always said I’d row across the Atlantic. I was either going to grow up and be a big blowhard, or I was going to do it,” Kurachi said.

Most people get over their boyhood bragging. For Kurachi it became an obsession.

Twice he tried to row across the Atlantic to England. He abandoned the first trip when a storm blew him hopelessly off course. Frostbite scuttled the second journey when Kurachi misjudged the weather in the North Atlantic in June.

In 1995, his last attempt, Kurachi lashed together 10 waterbed mattresses and tried to float from the Canary Islands to Antigua. He was about 300 miles short of his goal when he gave up and let himself get picked up by a merchant ship sailing for Europe.

“I had been praying and fasting for three days when something told me to quit,” he said. “I’m glad I did. You get promptings out there you learn to follow. It’s a really hard thing to do. I was within a week of finishing the trip.”

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Kurachi believes he’ll make it this time, even with only about five gallons of fresh water and a heavy dependence on Mother Nature to keep the fish biting.

Kurachi says he’ll eat only the fish he can catch--eating them raw--and the seaweed he can collect, for vitamin C.

Swallowing fish guts? No problem. Previous survival experiments have required him to sample some unusual cuisine.

Kurachi says he’s eaten dog and cat--road kill each time--as well as rat, roaches, even maggots to test his ability to shrug off the psychological difficulties of “foods” otherwise considered disgusting.

How do maggots taste? Like erasers, he says.

His vessel will be spartan at best. The 12-by-5-foot fiberglass raft will have an 8-foot metal mast for a sail.

“He swears there’s no way that boat could sink,” said friend Mike Anderson. “I say the waves are going to come down and break it all to pieces. I think he’s taking a chance. You couldn’t pay me to do it.”

The boat’s living space will be about 6 feet long and 4 feet wide. He’ll sleep on a piece of canvas. He’ll bring fishing gear, ropes, a few tools and a video camera to preserve his adventure for posterity.

He’ll also bring a laptop computer to keep his family informed of his whereabouts via e-mail. The correspondence will be brief, however. Satellite coverage is limited in the middle of the Atlantic. The computer will be kept in a watertight compartment with a Plexiglas cover. To type, Kurachi will slip his hands into gloves built into the compartment wall. Solar panels on the raft will power the computer.

“I tried to a get a phone company to sponsor me with a portable phone,” says Kurachi. “But the ‘worldwide coverage’ really isn’t.”

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Kurachi will count on currents and trade winds to get him where he’s going. A harness will keep him from getting separated from his raft in storms, and he will have an emergency homing beacon should he get in trouble and need rescue.

If the emergency beacon is activated, it will alert any nearby ships. If he’s close enough to U.S. waters, the Coast Guard could pick him up. No ship will be following him.

The Coast Guard, however, would prefer that Kurachi’s derring-do remain simply a fantasy.

“There are always going to be people who tempt nature,” said Rob Wyman, chief warrant officer in Houston. “They go out and challenge the sea. The Coast Guard, in no uncertain terms, discourages people from putting their lives at risk.”

Because he’s departing from a foreign port, the U.S. government cannot stop him, Wyman said. Once he’s in U.S. waters, Coast Guard officials can force him from the sea if they believe he is in imminent danger.

“If he does make this journey, if he does get into trouble, hopefully we will be able to help him,” Wyman said.

Kurachi, however, doesn’t want any interference, even if it’s done with good intentions.

“If I’ve crossed 5,000 miles of ocean and the Coast Guard wants to pull me out, they’d better send a pretty determined person in after me,” he said. “It’s not like I’d be willing to get off the raft.”

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The open ocean, with its sunrises and sunsets, will give Kurachi lots of time to contemplate his life.

And the solitude can be stifling.

“You have to have a lot of mind control” when one is alone on the open sea, said Kurachi, who owns a company that cleans out clogged sewer lines for homes and businesses. He’ll turn the business over to Anderson while he’s gone.

“The last time I was out, I had two months to evaluate everything in my life. The good and the bad.”

He reviewed the marriage that lasted about five years. It’s a time Kurachi would rather not discuss. He says his divorce helped spark his desire to cross the Atlantic. Now he avoids any relationship that would diminish his resolve for the voyage. Finding the courage for such a trip doesn’t happen overnight, he said.

“I haven’t dated in 15 years. I haven’t talked to a woman in a month,” Kurachi said. “I don’t want anything to get in the way of this trip. I’m just coming to terms with what happened the last time.”

He has two daughters, both of whom live in Arizona, far from the ocean.

“One of them thinks I’m crazy. The other one thinks [the trip] is a good idea,” he said.

Kurachi’s 19-year-old daughter, Maggie Bowles, said she’s concerned but won’t stress out worrying about her dad.

“He’s done it three other times, and every time he’s come back,” she said. “Besides, it doesn’t do me any good to sit around for four months freaking out and worrying about it. I really think that my dad will come out OK on this. He’s got what it takes.”

Kurachi isn’t making the trip for money or to raise awareness for a particular cause. “This is about surviving in the 21st century,” he said.

He hopes to write a book about how people accept risk.

Life poses much greater risks than he’ll be taking, he contended.

“Getting in a car with a driver who’s been drinking,” he said. “That’s an unacceptable risk. I won’t do that.”