San Francisco: The 83-year-old Japanese ocean adventurer Kenichi Horie has sailed successfully from San Francisco in the United States to Japan on a solo, non-stop voyage, apparently becoming the oldest person ever to achieve the Pacific crossing in this way.
His two-month-long trip in his 6-metre (20-foot) yacht Suntory Mermaid III ended when he arrived in the Kii Strait off western Japan early on Saturday morning. He covered some 8,500 kilometres (5,282 miles) during the voyage.
Horie made the crossing in the other direction in 1962, when he was 23, setting a record as the first and youngest person in the world to sail alone across what is the largest and deepest ocean on Earth.
That trip brought him some notoriety, as he did the crossing without a passport, meaning that he entered the US illegally.
In April, while still at sea, he blogged that during his 1962 trip, he “was constantly anxious” and worried that he would be caught.
“But this time it’s different, I was sent off by many people and have their support through tracking systems and wireless radio. I couldn’t be more grateful,” he said of his trip this year.
Despite the aid, he wrote on Friday that he was exhausted after fighting an adverse current for three days.
Horie is also known for sailing around the world solo in 1974 and traveling longitudinally around the world between 1978 and 1982.
The latest expedition was the first he had undertaken since 2008, when he sailed from Honolulu to the Kii Strait on a wave-powered 31-foot boat.
