“We’re having a little issue with the batteries this morning,” Beatrice Cordiano, an Italian scientist aboard the craft, said on the day of departure. Energy Observer was to travel up the East River, through Long Island Sound toward Massachusetts, and across the Atlantic, in the direction of the French coast; her more than sixty-two-thousand-mile journey would return to where it began, in 2017, in Saint-Malo. “It’s a problem that we usually do not have,” Cordiano said of the batteries.
Luc Bourserie, one of the ship’s engineers, grabbed some pliers and shouted, “This is high-voltage work,” before disappearing into a hull. After further shouting , Energy Observer’s electric motors puttered to life, and the vessel departed the marina. Marin Jarry, a merchant marine turned eco-evangelist, sat on the bridge, sipping espresso from a mug that read “The Captain’s Word Is Law” and smoking Marlboro Golds.