Small Boats & Atlantic Crossing

[double u]

Originally Posted by boatman61

These posts are not to belittle the guys achievement in taking on a solo Transat.. he joins a list of people who have done it over the years.
....

Absolutely!Not to belittle the guy's achievement at all! Only wanting to keep the memory of these other hardy people & their achievements alive*.
& I nearly forgot the German Rollo Gebhard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollo_Gebhard :
Med-Aden in open Hansa sailing dingy in ~58
Italy-NY in 5,6m Caprice
2x rtw in 7m Condor (no windvane, no autopilot)
all singlehanded
3rd rtw with his lady in HR 42 (including Cairns-Emden nonstop)
he died in 2014 aged 92, he was an inspiration to many!

*I noticed lately that a lot of sailing "youngsters"(<50 years) have never heard of Hiscock, Knox-Johnston, Blyth, Heyerdahl, Tim Severin, Moitessier, David Lewis,...

[Lula Mongo]

May be because he doesn't speak English that his name has not been mentioned in this post...Geronimo Saint Martin spent 10 years of his life sailing a H20, a production 20 footer. Started from Buenos Aires singlehanded and went north, met my brother in Recife who suggested he stopped in Ft Lauderdale to meet me. He continued north, NY, Terranova, Icleand, he spent a winter there and then took off towards the Spitbergen IS between 76 and 80.5 N. On his way he lost his mast, he filmed himself trying to repair the damage, I think its on you tube, and was unable to do so as he needed someone to hold it while he secured it...Lo and behold, a large Russian fishing boat stopped to help him, their dinghy was larger than his boat. He refuset to be loaded into their ship and continued toward Norway where he worked at a fishing factory, the next season he reached the islands and contiued to the ice wall. Back in Spitbergen he was given drawing from the school children, to be given to kids in Usuahia 54 degrees South, to where he went to fulfill the request. He is now back in Buenos Aires and La India in a museum like Vito Dumas's double ender Leigh. Geronimos deserves being mentioned. Fair winds.

[double u]

...ahh, the non-anglophones!
in the 60ies the young swiss-romand (from the francophone part of Switzerland) Michel Mermod converted a ~25' wooden lifeboat in Peru, named her "Geneve" & sailed her singlehandedly rtw on the tradewind route. He wrote a book about it "Des Ocean pour voir les hommes" (& in German "Über Meere zu Menschen") which I consider the very best written about a sailing voyage.
just found an english version too: https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Boo...-srp1-_-title1