Alone Around The World

Alon after sailing 80,000 miles on his baba 40 ketch, this 69-year-old sailor had some unfinished business to tidy up—a solo, non-stop circumnavigation. In this first instalment of a series we join jeff hartjoy as he sets sail on his gruelling voyage.

- Jeff Hartjoy

On July 28, 1999, my wife, Debbie, and I cut the dock lines on our Bob Perry-designed Baba 40 ketch, Sailors Run, at the Long Branch Marina in Washington’s South Puget Sound, and sailed away to explore the world under sail: an ambition I had nurtured since I first set foot on a sailboat nearly 30 years earlier. At last, at age 53, and having quit work after saving enough money for us to live comfortably, I never looked back, but only forward, to what might lie over the horizon.

With no time constraints or any of the other restraints that come from owning things on land, the feeling of our new-found freedom was totally intoxicating. Over the next 16 years, Debbie and I voyaged to more than 30 different countries, sailing over 80,000 miles together, and enjoying the lands and cultures of the many wonderful people we encountered—not to mention the wonderful family of cruising friends with whom we share the common bond of living the dream.

Although we both had an appetite for pursuing our cruising life (in my case possibly an insatiable one), over time Debbie’s desire to return back home and be part of her grandchildren’s life gradually became more important. As for me, I somehow felt there was just too much unfinished business. I had not yet circumnavigated the globe, and I surely was not getting any younger. Now in my late 60s, a quick circumnaviation seemed to make perfect sense. So I decided to sail Sailors Run around the world by myself, nonstop.

I spent the next three years gradually getting Sailors Run “buffed up” for what would be the ultimate challenge; not only for my 45 years of experience, but also for Sailors Run’s design and structural integrity, which would be tested to her ultimate limits. Our route through the Southern Ocean south of the five great capes has been the undoing of many a fine sailor and his vessel, and I wanted to be prepared.