Brooklyn native again sets out to row across Atlantic

A tenacious New Yorker who has been trying for nearly a decade to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean, but has been plagued by bad luck, shipwreck and maybe a little early naiveté, plans to embark on his fourth attempt at the epic journey sometime this week.

Victor Mooney, 48, of Brooklyn, left the Canary Islands Wednesday for a roughly 3,000-mile row to the British Virgin Islands. Along the way, he'll live on freeze-dried military rations, a variety of herbs and green tea and whatever fish he can yank from the sea.

"I feel very confident," Mooney said by telephone last week from a marina in Maspolamas, Gran Canaria. "Everything is checked, double-checked . . . I'm ready."

Mooney's first trans-Atlantic attempt, in 2006, ended when a 24-foot wood rowboat he'd built himself sank off the West African coast just hours after he'd pushed off from a beach in Senegal. Efforts in 2009 and 2011 ended, respectively, when drinking water systems failed and when the vessel sprang a leak, forcing Mooney to escape in a life raft and spend two weeks drifting before rescue.