Reza Baluchi first tried to navigate his “hydro pod” bubble to Bermuda in 2014.
That vessel was destroyed after he was stopped by the U.S. Coast Guard and it was towed to shore. Baluchi spent the next year working on a crab boat to earn the money to build his second bubble boat which was also intercepted by the Coast Guard, according to the Sun-Sentinel.
He managed to travel 90 miles in July in his third bubble craft before the Coast Guard sank the hamster-ball-like boat.
"Everything got messed up. My bubble is at the bottom of the ocean," Baluchi, 44, told the Sun-Sentinel. "They had no right to sink my bubble, that was my personal property."
After he was picked up he was taken to a Jacksonville psychiatric hospital for evaluation. He was released shortly thereafter.
A Jacksonville Sheriff's Office report says Baluchi "pulled out a knife, held it to his chest, and stated that he would kill himself if the U.S. Coast Guard did not unhook their boat from his raft and allow him to continue his travel," according to the New Times.
Baluchi said he never threatened to kill himself.
"Why would I want hurt myself?" he told the New Times. "I am (a) survivor, man."
Baluchi, an ultra marathon runner who defected from Iran in 1992 and was granted asylum in the U.S. in 2003, has made headlines in the past. He ran from Los Angeles to New York City to commemorate the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the U.S. to show that Iranians stood against terror, according to the New Times.
Baluchi told the Sun-Sentinel he is starting a job working on a fishing boat in Seattle in December.
But he is not giving up on his plan.
"I'm coming back to build another bubble," Baluchi told the Sun-Sentinel.
"My message is... no matter how many times you fail, you can do it," he told the New Times. "My goal is make this so people say, 'My God, they stop him three times, they destroy his bubble, but he made it. I can make it too.'"
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