ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, June 6, 1996 TAG: 9606060069
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LONDON
TYPE: NEWS OBIT
SOURCE: ROBERT BARR ASSOCIATED PRESS
PETER BIRD WANTED to be the first to row the Pacific both ways. His empty boat was found Tuesday.
Peter Bird knew what it took to row across the Pacific alone. Between failures, he had been the first man to do it.
But all his preparations - the oddly shaped cedar-and-fiberglass craft that looked like a fat cigar with a notch in the middle, the satellite tracking gear, the freeze-dried food and the desalination equipment - ultimately let him down.
His boat, the Sector II, was found upside down Tuesday in the Pacific Ocean, 1,100 miles off the east coast of Japan. Japan's coast guard said it searched for two days but found no signs of the rower.
Kenneth Crutchlow, a friend of the Bird family who acted as spokesman for the venture, said it appeared there was no doubt that it was Bird's craft.
Bird had craved a peculiar solitude: rowing 20 strokes a minute, eight hours a day with a three-minute break each hour. He carried postcards of England to remind him about greenery.
``I choose to be alone, and thus by definition I am not lonely,'' he once said.
He did fear overturning, and the 29-foot Sector II carried fresh water as ballast to keep it upright. It wasn't immediately clear why it had flipped.
It was clear why Bird had set out to cross the Pacific.
``Peter was doing what he loved. He was passionate about it,'' Crutchlow said. ``He wanted to be the first man to row the Pacific both ways. It was his dream.''
Bird set off March 27 from Vostochny, near Vladivostock on Russia's east coast. He navigated the Sea of Japan and entered the Pacific on April 8, reporting good progress.
Polly Wickham, who lived with Bird and their 5-year-old son, Louis, in southwest London, said he had seemed fine when they spoke by radio last Friday.
``I can't think about it,'' she said. ``It is just too terrible.''
Bird's first long-distance journey was with a friend, Derek King, in 1974. They rowed 4,300 miles east-to-west across the Atlantic from Gibraltar at the entrance to the Mediterranean to the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. It took them 106 days, and they wrote about their venture in ``Small Boat Against the Sea.''
In 1980, Bird set out to row across the Pacific, but wrecked in Hawaii. He tried again in 1982, setting off from San Francisco in the 32-foot Hele-on-Britannia and ending up, 294 days later, just off the Great Barrier Reef, where the Australian Navy rescued him.
The Guinness Book of Records thought that was close enough, and recognized him as the first oarsman to cross the Pacific. But it wasn't good enough for Bird.
``Because of what happened at the end, that row still feels incomplete. It is unfinished and I knew then that I would have to finish it,'' he said.
So he tried to make an eastward crossing of the Pacific. The first try, in 1994, ended in bad weather 2,100 miles short of San Francisco. His second attempt apparently was his last.
Bird had gotten used to answering questions about why he set off to sea alone, though he didn't really have an answer.
``I once came up with a German container ship in drenching rain after 200 days in the Pacific and they asked that question and my nationality,'' he said in an interview with The Associated Press in 1992.
``When I said I was British, they seemed to think that explained everything.''
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Bird. (headshot) KEYWORDS: FATALITYby CNB