New Yorker starts Atlantic row for AIDS, rights

GOREE ISLAND, Senegal, May 8 (Reuters) A 41-year-old New Yorker set off from West Africa in a 24-foot wooden boat on a 3,000 mile solo row across the Atlantic, hoping to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and commemorate the slave trade.

Victor Mooney Yesterday crawled on his hands and knees through the colonial slave house on Goree Island -- facing the Senegalese capital Dakar -- before emerging at the ''Gate of No Return'' through which black slaves once boarded waiting vessels. He then swam to his boat and set off westwards for New York's Brooklyn Bridge in his boat, John Paul the Great.

He is due to retrace the route of vessels that took tens of thousands of captives from African slaving ports to the Americas.

''As an African American, as a descendant of some part of West Africa, I feel my ancestors saying 'Welcome home'. I am sure they will guide me as I go in this direction,'' he said.

''There are two objectives -- HIV/AIDS and to memorialise our (enslaved) ancestors,'' Mooney told Reuters earlier as he packed military food rations, sea charts, all-weather gear and medical supplies into his boat.

Mooney hopes his trip across the Atlantic will raise awareness of the plight of millions suffering from AIDS in Africa, the world's poorest continent.

One of Mooney's brothers died from AIDS and another is HIV positive, so the rower's challenge is a personal one. But he also wants the publicity to help ensure anti-retroviral drugs are more widely available in Africa.

AIDS has orphaned more than 12 million children in Africa and is cutting the continent's workforce down in its prime.

The former public affairs officer says he is very much aware of the scale of the task of paddling across the Atlantic in a 24-foot wooden boat.

''As I don't have a motor or a sail, I could end up in South America or the southern region of the Caribbean,'' he acknowledged.

''Of course, I'm nervous.'' Mooney, who has trained for two years, expects to cover the 3,000 nautical miles in four months but then will take longer to row to New York once he is in American waters.

A small group of Senegalese and handful of tourists gathered on the rocky beach to watch the American set off yesterday.

''I know the sea and how it gets. That man is going to have trouble in that boat -- he doesn't even seem to know how to row,'' said a local boatman who saw him take his first strokes.

REUTERS OM RK0928