-When I heard about the bubble, I was just amazed.
I just never heard of anything like this.
-Like a hamster inside a wheel,
the world-class athlete planned to walk on water
more than 1,000 miles from Miami to Bermuda.
-No one person is going to overcome the ocean.
There was only going to be a bad outcome.
This is by far the most bizarre case that I was involved with.
-So, there's no motors.
He runs in that thing and powers it from --
-From here to Bermuda. -From here to Bermuda.
-With the Bermuda Triangle
and all these vessels disappearing over the years,
they thought it was a suicide mission.
-I really didn't know if he was gonna come home alive or not.
They were saying how it cost taxpayer money,
and "crazy Florida man."
I mean, we can't help what people think.
♪♪
[ Ding! ]
♪♪
-I tried to talk him out of it for quite a while
because, obviously, it's extremely dangerous.
I really didn't know if he was gonna come home alive or not.
-One of our sectors, Sector Miami, got a call
from a concerned boater that there was a man in a bubble
that was lost and was asking for directions to Bermuda.
It became really obvious really fast that he wasn't a sailor,
didn't know the ocean,
was unequipped to do what he was attempting to do.
We wound up staying with him in the bubble
for at least a full day
as we tried to hash through what our authorities were.
At that point, we let the patrol boat depart the scene,
and then a day or two later,
a cold front knocked the bubble on his side,
so he set off what's called a spot device.
He was in need of assistance, and we went out and rescued him.
Captain of the Port of Miami
gave him basically a cease-and-desist order,
that, "you're not to get underway in your bubble.
If you do, you will be in violation
of Coast Guard regulations."
And that seemed to stop him for a while,
until he was discovered planning a voyage.
He'd rebuilt the bubble,
and no amount of reasoning or common sense
was going to change his mind.
[ Sander whirring ]
[ Metal clatters ]
[ Tanks clatter ]
[ Whirring ]
-This is one of the first prototypes, there.
-First one. -Yeah.
[ Air pump whirring ]
We are in North Palm Beach, Florida, in the Intracoastal,
and this is where Reza stored the bubble for a year
while we were trying to get the Coast Guard,
the situation kind of sorted out,
and decide on when the weather was good
for him to run to Bermuda again,
and he had waited for so long to go on his mission,
so he had reached a point where he was just frustrated,
and he said to me, "George, I want to go.
It's time for me to go."
♪♪
-Reza's been running since he was about 7 years old.
He grew up in Northern Iran on a rice farm.
He was required at a very young age
to run to school, run back.
It was a very rough life there,
and he struggled with following the traditional law of Iran.
So, on Ramadan, he got caught eating,
and he was publicly beaten.
He had to leave.
He was running from abuse.
So he left, and then he came to the United States after that,
running across the country, raising money for charities.
-Reza Baluchi is spreading peace by running cross-country.
He's running in the name of peace,
after being jailed in his native country, Iran,
for political and religious violations.
-He is driven by a lot of different forces,
and he has the capability of doing these things --
running across the country
or, you know, running into Bermuda on a hydropod.
♪♪
-It was actually sad watching the bubble leave with Reza
because I didn't know, you know, if I'm gonna see him again.
I said, "Reza, what if there's a hurricane?"
He says, "It doesn't matter. I want to go in the bubble.
I'll zip it up, and wherever the hurricane takes me, I'll go."
-It was difficult, you know, letting go and just --
I care about him, and just, you know,
pushing him out into the ocean --
"Good luck. I hope you make it," you know?
It was crazy.
-What we could see with his Facebook posts,
he was doing this as part of a charity event,
that he wanted schoolchildren to be able to track him
and make donations.
-Alright, go!
Keep it up! Yeah!
-He was putting himself
at the whim of Mother Nature and the ocean,
and you're just not going to win.
Temperatures inside the bubble could get up to 120 degrees.
Running in a bubble, sleeping at night,
he's gonna wind up getting pushed off towards England
or in one of the eddies that swirl around
in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean forever.
You've got a better chance of winning the Powerball lottery
than you do of starting in Florida
and trying to run to Bermuda.
We referred to it as the "Hamster Wheel of Doom."
♪♪
-Five days after Reza set sail,
I don't hear from him, and I had no communication.
I thought the bubble and him were gone.
I thought he was in the bottom of the ocean and that's it.
-I was watching the line move up on the GPS tracker,
and then, all of a sudden, I saw it turn to the right,
and I knew something was up.
-The final time, we were called in
by a concerned mariner.
[ Boat horn honks ]
The patrol boat came up to the bubble.
We tried to have a conversation with him,
tried to get him to embark the boat.
Based on the Captain of the Port Order...
...and his physical condition,
we determined it was unsafe for him to continue.
So we removed him from the bubble...
and sank the bubble as a hazard to navigation.
♪♪
-They just shot it down into the ocean,
and he had all his backpack, supplies, GPS tracker --
a lot of the things that he had been working on.
-That was like over $120,000 of his life
that he had put into that bubble,
and it all just got stolen in 30 minutes
in the middle of the ocean.
-The Coast Guard response
cost the taxpayers approximately $144,000.
The fact that he was putting himself at risk,
the people that were gonna have to respond to his attempt
just shows very poor judgement.
-Him being from Iran
and not knowing, really, what he went through
and, you know, that he was imprisoned
and he was tortured in jail,
and him being that free-thinker is what put him in jail,
and, you know, thank God Reza came to America.
But here, he always thought,
"Okay, I'm free to do whatever I want,"
and he never expected
that they would not let him do what he wants to do.
This is the land of the free. That's why he came here.
Running is just...Reza.
Reza runs. He is exactly like Forrest Gump.
You know, people didn't understand Forrest Gump.
People don't understand Reza.
But look at Forrest Gump.
Everybody loved that movie,
and I think Reza will get to do his bubble dream.
-I don't think this is the last that we've heard of Reza,
but I hope this is the last that we've heard of Reza
trying to go somewhere in a bubble on the water.
♪♪