Around the corner from the hubbub of Basketball City, the rock climbing walls, and the bowling alleys of the Chelsea Piers, lives a man on a boat.

The din and zoom of cars racing along the West Side Highway seem so far away. Here, a quiet fire crackles in a wood-burning stove. KROQ plays softly on the hi-fi and the creak of the 70-foot schooner, Anne, groans in the background.

PHOTO: LEELA AGUADULCE LANDRESS Reid Stowe warms his 70-foot home, the schooner Anne, with a wood-burning stove.

This December, Reid Stowe, captain of the Anne, will push off from Pier 63 where his schooner is anchored and set sail for the next 1,000 days. His plan is stay out of site of land and, more importantly, leave dry land longer than anyone ever has since our distant cousins first emerged from the primordial stew eons ago.

He will not refuel, he will not re-supply, he will not pull into a harbor.

Stowe feeds his fire, makes tea and settles into a cushioned bench in the cabin he designed and built. "Sailing," he says, has always been about going "from point A to point B as quickly as you could, or doing the fishing route that you had to do."

He leans back to take a breath before launching into a whirlwind of how and why he plans to change that idea, not only for himself, but for others as well..

"It's really beyond sailing, to me it's more about that I'm the human that will depart terra firma longer than any human ever has. To me that's just terribly exciting."

It is not that he will just be on a boat, it is that he is embarking on a journey to explore and raise human consciousness. His 1,000-day voyage is an opportunity to head into what he repeatedly equates with the "white light void" of death with the opportunity to come out alive on the other side.

"We are all more enlightened if we pass through death with consciousness, with our eyes open, and that's in a sense what I'm learning to do at sea because it really is a pure white light void," he explains.

"The only thing that's there is me as I confront myself and who I am. That's how I feel my consciousness and that's what happens when I'm out at sea."

Next: Casting Off, 1000 Days