At 83 he crosses the Pacific alone, he is the oldest to make the 8,500 km crossing
Kenichi Horie was also the first to complete it, when he was 23The 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)