In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and in 1993 Richard Todd sailed the same route, too.

Todd, 77, a Snoqualmie Valley resident since 1979, recreated Columbus’ voyage of discovery 501 years after the fact when he sailed across the Atlantic on his crab fishing boat, Polar Star, having more than his fair share of adventures and near disasters along the way.

He has just put the finishing touches on a book about his voyage. Entitled “Saga of the Polar Star,” it tells how he sailed from the port of Vigo in northwestern Spain to the Azores in the mid-Atlantic, to the Bahamas and Florida, through the Panama Canal and then up the West Coast in a series of stages from the summer of 1993 through the fall of 1996. Along the way, he ran into three hurricanes and a variety of mechanical troubles.

Todd has spent a lifetime career as a chief engineer aboard commercial fishing vessels and was working in the Bering Sea on crab fishing boats in the early 1990s. The company he worked for had plans to convert some of its crab boats to trawlers, and a Spanish shipyard proposed to do the conversion relatively inexpensively. Todd’s company arranged for one of its crab fishing vessels, the Polar Star, to sail to the port of Vigo in the northwestern corner of Spain and get retrofitted from the keel up into a 220-foot trawler.

The Polar Star was sailed through the Panama Canal before its engine’s suffered catastrophic failure, after which point it was packed into a container ship and sailed across the Atlantic.

Meanwhile, the financing fell apart and the Polar Star sat in a Spanish shipyard in the port city of Vigo, Spain, for nearly a year. It was decided, however, to make the necessary repairs and sail her back across the Atlantic.

That summer the owner sold the boat to Todd, who spent more than 12 months working to get it operational. Finally, in October 1994, he was ready to leave. With one crewman, he sailed from Vigo to the Azores Islands in the mid Atlantic, a six-day trip.

The Polar Star’s engine failed 540 miles off the coast of Florida and the boat was forced to drift in the Bermuda Triangle. Todd called for help and a Canadian search and rescue plane responded. With the aircrew’s assistance, a fuel tanker en route to Venezuela passed by the Polar Star and towed them to the island of Great Abaco in the Bahamas.

“They took off at 12 knots, which was faster than the Polar Star, I think, had ever gone,” said Todd.

They moored in the Bahamas for the duration of the winter for engine repairs. After two back-to-back hurricanes beached the Polar Star, it was hauled back in the water in the early fall of 1995.

Todd and his son, also an experienced fishing boat captain, then fueled the boat and left for Miami, Fla. They arrived in Miami on Election Day 1995.

Todd then left Miami, went around Cuba and on through the massive locks of the Panama Canal. From there, he proceeded north along the western coast of Central America. Two hundred miles south of San Diego, the Polar Star lost its rudder. Still stuck on its due-north course, Todd decided to keep going, reckoning they could make the Baja Peninsula. He contacted the U.S. Coast Guard to inform them of their unusual situation.

“They didn’t believe us at first, you could hear them saying, ‘You don’t have a rudder, but you’re still continuing?'” Todd finally lost control of the boat in strong winds and went some 200 miles north, near Ensenada, Mexico.

He “rendezvoused” with a tugboat to pull the Polar Star into Ensenada harbor. From there, a new rudder was constructed as the boat was put in dry dock. The Alaskan crab-fishing season had ended, so he decided to fish for albacore tuna along the Pacific Coast for about four months, fishing in American waters along the West Coast. In this manner, the Polar Star finally reached Ilwaco, Wash., in September 1996.

The Polar Star then headed south again and Todd found work with a San Diego seafood company later that fall. The book finishes at this point, but the boat continued its fishing career, eventually returning to Alaska to fish for crab and then on to Hawaii to fish for lobster.

After he sold his interests in the boat in late 1996, his daughter Nicholette encouraged him to write about his experiences. The process of writing the book took several years, with Todd writing longhand from notes he had taken while working on the boat. He typed the manuscript while working on a fishing vessel based out of Russia for six months, from late 1999 to early 2000.

“I think one of the significant things was that no matter where you are in the world, if you have the right attitude, you will find people that are willing to help you and [who] are very, very good-hearted,” said Todd.

The book is for sale at Carmichaels True Value Hardware store, 8150 Falls Ave S.E. in Snoqualmie.

For more information about the “Saga of the Polar Star,” e-mail Todd at toddmarine@hotmail.com.