Novice sailor's 1,000-day record bid cut short - by seasickness - Alexandra Topping

Like all epic voyages it was plagued by difficulties: a damaged vessel, limited diet, exhaustion. But Soanya Ahmad's 1,000-day voyage was finally defeated - only a third of the way through - by the most predictable of ailments: seasickness.

The 24-year-old set out with her boyfriend, Reid Stowe, 56, last April intending to sail around the world for 1,000 days without touching land. They hoped to smash the 657-day record set by the Australian yachtsman Jon Sanders, who circumnavigated the globe three times between 1986 and 1988.

"It was such a hard decision to make," said Ahmad, after landing back in New York on Friday, having left the 21-metre yacht off Australia late last month. "We'd been through so much."

On their website, 1,000 days, she wrote: "At times the nausea was enough to lay me flat and incapable of doing anything ... I feel two more years of this would not be good for me and so I have decided to leave the boat."

Stowe has been a professional sailor and adventurer since he was a teenager, but Ahmad had never sailed beyond the Hudson River before they set off from Hoboken, New Jersey, on April 21 2007.

The journey was fraught with mishaps. A freighter crashed into them only days into the voyage, said Ahmad, and they lived on dried fish and sprouts, but her severe seasickness proved to be the straw that broke the camel's back. [for more click on the heading]