Who is the greatest sailor of all time? All-knowing Google suggests it may be Sir Robin Knox-Johnston or Bernard Moitessier or Dame Ellen MacArthur. Or maybe Robin Lee Graham or Eric Tabarly. In fact, it proposes over 30 contenders, but nowhere among them is the name Jon Sanders.
Yet Sanders ought to be in the top rank of that list. No one comes close to the Australian in terms of solo miles or time alone at sea. His sailing career is simply unmatched in the cruising world.
The latest chapter was nearing its conclusion on 22 October when the 81-year-old made landfall in Bundaberg, Australia after almost 11 months into his attempt to solo circumnavigate the world for an 11th time.
Sanders’ circumnavigation in his 39ft S&S design Perie Banou II began in October 2019 in Fremantle nearly two years after a circumnavigation many (not he) had billed as his swansong.
During the voyage, tagged #NoPlasticWaste, he has collected sea water samples which he sent off to Curtin University in Western Australia to determine the quantity of microplastics in our oceans.
Sanders sailed first to Mauritius, where he stopped to reprovision and make some repairs, then Cape Town before continuing onwards to St Helena and St Maarten. There he was halted by the COVID-19 lockdown.
In June he set free from St Maarten for the Panama Canal. Then, to avoid a succession of restrictions in the Pacific he sailed over 4,000 miles direct to Tahiti and a final 3,000 miles to Bundaberg. He kept a regular blog (jonsanders.com) so understated it can seem uneventful. At one stage Sanders ponders that he may be ‘a bit boring’. Maybe that is how life alone at sea looks when you’ve done so much of it.
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