Solo sailor fulfils his dream at 81
When most of us would be happy to do a day’s hike or sail round the coast, octogenarian Australian Bill Hatfield has been spending most of the last few years sailing alone in an attempt to circumnavigate non-stop round the world. The 81-year-old finally succeeded on his fourth attempt and became the oldest person to sail non-stop and unassisted round the world alone when he arrived back in Gold Coast Seaway, Queensland, on 22 February.
Hatfield, a former fisherman from Bundaberg, has spent the majority of the last five years at sea in his 38ft cutter L’eau Commotion. In 2015, rigging damage forced him to abort the attempt just short of Cape Horn. The following year he set out again, but was set back after two months by a significant storm in the Great Australian Bight.
In 2018, he set out again and this time completed a circumnavigation alone from Australia, winning awards for the voyage. But after a particularly difficult rounding of Cape Horn he was forced by rig and steering damage to make a stop in the Falkland Islands for repairs.
Not content with this, he set out again on 8 June last year on another attempt to sail non-stop round the world westabout, the difficult ‘wrong way’ route.
His 259-day voyage required careful preservation of boat and sailor. He sailed and ate conservatively, revealing that his usual daily diet was “a third of a tin of beans, a tin of tuna, 100g of rice and flour and oats, and 150g of milk powder.”
He was lucky to recover from falling overboard at one point while caught up in his sail. “I did a silly thing,” he admitted. “The shackle of my sail broke and as I was pulling it in, the sail got underneath me and I had no harness on. But otherwise it went well,” he said laconically.
He wrote regularly on his blog, which revealed a deep-thinking and philosophical man who often reflected on humanity’s place in the world. In a memorable treatise entitled ‘The Laws of Nature and The Laws of Man’, he wrote about entropy in thermodynamics, and the law of universal gravitation.
Explaining why it was foremost in his mind, he said: ‘Here I am far away from the climate catastrophe being brought about by you landlubbers using thin plastic shopping bags instead of thick, indestructible ones and coal from Queensland instead of distillate from Kuwait to ward off those wintry chills.
‘At least for another 49 days till the blame for the imminent collapse of society is transferred to my shoulders as a person who is not Acting and not Acting Right Now.’