US citizen halted during ‘hamster wheel’ ocean crossing

Arrest ensued for a Florida resident who tried to travel to London by running across the Atlantic Ocean with a DIY mechanism resembling a hamster wheel.

The US Coast Guard caught Reza Baluchi about 70 miles away from Tybee Island, Georgia on August 26th.

Officials said the runner, who is 44 years old, did not want to get off the boat and stayed on it for many days. He also said he might harm himself.

Mr Baluchi has attempted three trips that were very much like his current one. However, all three of these trips were stopped by the Coast Guard.

The makeshift machine he was using looks like a wheel. It has paddles that push it forward when the wheel spins.

According to the criminal complaint, the US Coast Guard officers decided that Baluchi was doing a very unsafe trip because the boat was floating due to wiring and buoys.

Mr Baluchi started his journey when officials were getting ready for a big hurricane.

However, he didn’t want to leave the boat for three days and said he would hurt himself with a long knife. According to legal documents, he also said that he had a bomb on the plane.

On September 1st, he finally gave up and left his ship after being taken to a Coast Guard base in Miami.

Officials later found out that the “bomb” was not real.

Now, he is being accused by the government of obstructing boarding and breaking a Captain’s order.

We don’t know if he has hired a lawyer to help him in his criminal case.

Mr Baluchi has been arrested before for going out to sea in his ship, which he calls a “bubble”.

In 2021, he got arrested because he was rescued while attempting to ride his way from Florida to New York. He had drifted about 30 miles south from where he started.

In 2014, he needed help getting out of a similar machine close to St Augustine. Then, two years later, he had to be saved again from the water near Palm Beach, Florida.

Based on past interviews, Mr. Baluchi said that he was trying to go on these trips to gather funds for different reasons, like helping homeless people and supporting the Coast Guard.

“I want to collect money for homeless people, the Coast Guard, the police department, and the fire department,” he shared with WOFL-TV in Orlando in 2021.

“They work in jobs that serve the public, their main goal is to keep everyone safe, and they assist others. ”