Sanders set for 11th solo circumnavigation
He said his 10th solo circumnavigation around the world would be his last, but now Jon Sanders, 80, has announced he will sail around the globe again.
The legendary Australian skipper is preparing his Sparkman & Stephens 39, Perie Banou II, to leave from Freemantle on 13 October 2019. Unlike his previous voyages, Sanders will be helping to research ocean microplastics by collecting daily water samples. These will be dropped off at pre-arranged ports for dispatch to marine institutions for analysis. It is hoped this will provide reliable data on the amount of plastic pollution in Southern Hemisphere oceans.
His 12-month voyage will take him from Western Australia to the Cape of Good Hope and then northwest to St Helena, before crossing the Atlantic to the Caribbean. He will then transit the Panama Canal into the Pacific to the Galápagos Island and then on to Tahiti, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga and back to Australia. Follow his voyage at: www.noplasticoceans.org.
Meanwhile fellow circumnavigator, Japanese skipper Minoru Saitō, 85, who at 71 claimed the record for the oldest person to sail around the world non-stop and unassisted, has been forced to put his plans for another solo and non-stop circumnavigation on hold after he was rescued from his 56ft 1989 steel-hulled cutter-rigged sloop, Shuten Dojhi II. Saitō was sailing the yacht back to Japan following a refit in the Philippines, but was forced to abandon it on 1 July after it developed steering problems.