Sailing Alone Around the World

One of the great pure sailors of all time was Joshua Slocum. Born in 1844 in eastern Canada he remains one of the most renowned sailors of all time—deservedly, because he completed the first documented circumnavigation of the world alone in a sailboat. A severe-looking man in maturity with a completely bald head and a very full goatee. His four children were born at sea on his ships. And his adventures literally around the world are too numerous to enumerate here. Suffice to say, this was a man “rocked in the cradle of the deep,” with saltwater in his veins.… show more.

Slocum (1844-1908) was the first person to sail around the world single-handed, and his account of that three-year voyage is one of the classics of sailing literature. He built his 35-foot yacht ‘Spray’ with his own hands, having earlier served as master of several sailing ships, and set off from Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1895. Slocum was a great showman and storyteller, and was perhaps occasionally guilty of exaggeration, but there is no doubt about the scale of his achievement, and his book is a really wonderful read. It includes storms, narrow escapes from shipwreck, and some of the best descriptions… show more.

Of course, I’ve read lots of sailing books. It’s a genre, it’s my world, I’m a reader. So, I’ve chosen the proto solo sail, lived and written before anyone else had lived such an experience and written about it. Slocum took off at the end of the nineteenth century, when engines were replacing sails, and before sailing morphed into sport, leisure, and nomadic lifestyle.

The first person to sail around the world single-handedly, he did it on The Spray, a leaky old wooden boat he salvaged from a beach and restored himself, a journey in and of itself. Without a… show more.