The oldest navigator from Japan to have completed the solo crossing of the Pacific, a route of 8,500 kilometers without stopping and in just over two months.

83-year-old Kenichi Horie landed in the Strait of Kii - which separates the prefectures of Wakayama and Tokushima, southwest of Japan - at 2:39 a.m. (7:39 p.m. in Italy) aboard the 6-meter yacht, the Mermaid III hints, weighing one ton. It left on March 27 from San Francisco Bay, California.

His words: "I am extremely happy to be back home and not to have had any impediments, and I am grateful for the support I have been given".

The boat in which he was traveling, without engine and without radar , to save space, passed the Hawaiian Islands in April, using solar panels installed on board, and a satellite phone to communicate with his assistants on land.

The itinerary is the same one that Horie, then 23, completed 60 years ago in reverse : when he became the first navigator to cross the Pacific alone without making a port, from the west coast of Nishinomiya, in about 90 days, and without a passport. .

A journey that made him famous and about which a bastseller wrote. The adventurer intends to continue challenging himself, " at least until I become a centenarian ."

(Unioneonline / L)

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