Based on the TravelGrit.com Interview by Bernie Harberts
Reza Baluchi is attempting to travel 21,000 miles in his hydropod from Taiwan to the United States.
I (Bernie Harberts) spoke with Reza recently on my TravelGrit.com podcast. It was late—almost midnight in Taiwan, where Reza is preparing for his latest voyage.
Reza’s talks in short bursts and uses his eyes and hands to express himself. He speaks with the certainty of someone who has already decided that no obstacle will stop him—not the ocean, not storms, not imprisonment in an Iranian jail and certainly not the U.S. Coast Guard.
Here is Reza’s story.
Listen to our full conversation on the Travel Grit podcast.
What is the Reza Baluchi Hydropod?
A hydropod resembles a hamster wheel. It is Reza’s invention.
Reza’s current hydropod is 12 feet tall, 12 feet wide and weighs about 1,000 pounds. “Hydropod is something with human power,” he says. “If I’m running, they move. If I don’t run, they’re for nothing.”
The hydropod he’s using on his upcoming voyage is the fifth generation of the design.
For flotation, he has 24 inflatable fenders, the kind boats put out when they approach a dock.
Inside the central compartment, there’s about 7 feet of headroom. At night, he sleeps on a platform. “I make one table. When I put the tent on, it tightens me. If anything happened, I don’t fall on the floor.”
Can the hydropod sink? “Never. No. Impossible,” he says.
Life at Sea Aboard a Hydropod
Reza says his goal is to stay at sea for 365 days. “Normal, if you go for 365 days, you need 20,000 pounds of food,” he says. But not Reza. He plans to carry 2,000 pounds of food.
He’s created special energy bars made from dates. His other provisions include dried mango, Brazil nuts, and “some tuna if I don’t catch any fish.” He’ll start with 20 to 40 gallons of water and also catch rain.
He carries a small propane stove for cooking. When he catches big fish, he says he plans to make fish jerky.
His progress depends entirely on his own effort. If he doesn’t walk, the hydropod doesn’t move.
When storms hit, he has a routine: “If a storm coming, big wave coming, I put on my bicycle helmet. I have something to put on my face so water, I can breathe, no water splash in my mouth.”
If it’s nighttime: “I sleep very light. If bad weather, you cannot sleep. All the time you watch it till weather pass.”
Reza says one of the questions that people ask him the most is how he’ll go to the toilet.
“I do the same thing fishermen do,” he says. He says you just have to open the door on the hydropod’s central chamber, and “put your ass outside. But be careful shark don’t bite you!”
To most boaters, this would be a grueling way to spend time on the water. To Reza, compared to 18 months in an Iranian prison being tortured, this is freedom.
The Background
Reza grew up in northern Iran near the Caspian Sea, where his father and mother had a rice farm. He was poor. He ran 7 miles to school and 7 miles home every day because he had no money for taxi. It took him 12 years to save $12 to buy a bicycle.
In Iran, he had problems with the government. He wasn’t religious. During Ramadan, he was beaten for eating. If he wore certain clothes or had long hair, they would shave his head and arrest him. He was tortured, had his right shoulder broken, was put in the trunk of a car, and imprisoned for 18 months.
At 14, he became an international cyclist. When the Iranian cycling team traveled out of the country for a race, Reza escaped. Everyone on the team had signed a bond or had a family member put up a house as collateral ensuring the team member’s return. Reza didn’t do either of these things. Everyone else returned to Iran. He didn’t.
Over the next seven years, he cycled through 55 countries—50,000 miles—for peace.
From Pedaling to Running
Before focusing on ocean crossings, Reza was an ultra-marathon runner. He says he ran across the United States three times. He also told me that he ran around the entire United States—11,720 miles in 202 days — raising money for a children’s hospital.
In total, he says he’s run 150,000 miles. That’s the equivalent of five times around the world.
Just recently, he said he ran 1,300 kilometers around Taiwan in 15 days. Now he’s preparing to launch his hydropod from somewhere on Asia’s Pacific coast.
The Route
The voyage Reza has in mind covers approximately 21,000 miles. He’ll launch from Asia. “I cannot say location,” he says. “Maybe Japan, maybe Philippines, maybe Taiwan.”
Timing is critical. The Kuroshio Current flows north toward Alaska. To avoid being swept off course, he’s starting in December. “December have south wind coming from north going to south. The current cannot take me. Wind is stronger. So I start in December.”
From his launch point, he’ll head south. “If I start December, by February I am in Malaysia, in Singapore. Two months.” Then he’ll continue west. “I go South China Sea, then Red Sea, Black Sea, all the way to Turkey, France, Spain, Portugal, back to the United States.” A map of his route indicates he’ll end is journey in Pompano Beach, Florida.
The Coast Guard
Reza says he’s had multiple interactions with the Coast Guard over his various hydropod attempts. He says he’s traveled about 2,000 kilometers total in his hydropods. His first voyage was from Newport Beach, California to Catalina Island and back—52 miles in 19 hours.
Here are two examples of how his voyages have ended:
Reza says one time, his GPS tracker was mounted on his helmet. When a crab fishing boat threw him water and he was bouncing around trying to secure it, his helmet fell in the water, activating the emergency signal. The Coast Guard showed up two hours later. They told him to come out. He refused. Reza ended up complying and the Coast Guard took him by helicopter to Tampa.
The fishermen towed what was left of his hydropod back to shore. It was beyond repair. After that, they gave him a job working on a fishing boat, where he worked for years, learning about the ocean and earning money to build new hydropods.
Reza built another hydropod.
In 2016, the Coast Guard once again intercepted Reza and took him off his latest hydropod. They brought him to Jacksonville where he was sent to a mental hospital. The hospital’s doctor evaluated him and said he was okay to go. But Reza asked to stay one more night. He told the hospital he was making a documentary and was curious what life was like inside a mental hospital. He talked to people there about their problems. He joined their meetings, and some said he seemed crazier than they were. The next day, the mental hospital confirmed he didn’t need to be there and released him.
He didn’t have any money or transportation, so he got $100 from a bank and ran home to South Florida.
Each time the Coast Guard has stopped him, Reza has built another hydropod. The vessel he’s preparing in Taiwan is his fifth generation. His voyage will begin far from the Coast Guard’s jurisdiction.
Reza’s Philosophy
When asked why he does this, Reza says, “If you have a dream, you must follow your dream. Dream no coming after you.”
He’s trying to prove something about human potential. “I want to show people if your mind is strong you can do anything. Your mind is 85, 90 percent of everything. Some people think I am crazy. This is okay. I want to help them.”
His mission is about more than the ocean. “I want to try to bring peace. Each wave can move, and connect to another wave around the world, and bring peace. One love. One mission. One dream.”
Reza has taken the spirit of peace to what some might say is the extreme.
He tells the story of biking through South Africa when a seven-foot-tall man stopped him at 4 o’clock and punched him hard in the face. His eyes filled with tears, but Reza said “thank you” and kept going. Six hours later, the same man found him and asked, “When I hit you, why did you say thank you?”
Reza told the man, “I don’t know. Maybe you have a problem with your wife, with your kid. I just let go.” The man hugged him and took him back to his house, where Reza camped in the man’s yard. The next day, the man dropped him off where he’d picked him up.
“People, they have childhood abuse, somebody mean to them, they don’t know about love. Just forgiving them. I want to show them everything possible if you follow the road.”
As to the Coast Guard stopping him repeatedly, Reza says, “I love Coast Guard. Anytime Coast Guard is stopping me, my mission go bigger. They make me more stronger.”
Hydropod Launch
Reza is currently making final preparations in Taiwan. His newest hydropod is almost ready. The exact launch date and location remain his secret.
Soon, Reza Baluchi will push his hydropod into the ocean and start running.
Whether he makes it all 21,000 miles or not, he’s already proven something: that at 52, after torture, imprisonment, and being stopped multiple times by the Coast Guard, a person can still look at the ocean and say, “I’m going to run across you.”
Because dreams don’t come after you. You have to chase them.
More about Reza’s hydropod voyages at RunWithReza.tv.
Listen to Reza’s interview on the Travel Grit podcast.
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