Horie plans repeat of solo sailing adventure, in opposite direction

The Yomiuri Shimbun

November 25, 2021

Sixty years after earning fame with a nonstop transpacific solo voyage from Japan to San Francisco, adventurer Kenichi Horie plans to head back the other way.

Horie will make the trip — which will make the 83-year-old the oldest in history to complete the journey — next year from mid-March to early June, he announced at a press conference in Tokyo on Wednesday.

“I plan to keep on sailing until I’m 100 years old, but I don’t know if I will be healthy or not at 100,” Horie said. “I’m in good health right now, so I don’t want to miss the chance.”

In 1962, Horie sailed his small sailboat Mermaid from Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, across the Pacific to San Francisco without stopping at any port.

Later that year he published an account of the voyage titled “Taiheiyo Hitoribocchi,” (Kodoku: Sailing Alone Across the Pacific), which became a bestseller and earned Horie the Kikuchi Kan literary prize. The book was made into a film of the same title (“Alone Across the Pacific” in English) in 1963 starring actor Yujiro Ishihara.

Horie has been pushing his limits since then, including a westward-bound solo nonstop around-the-world voyage from 1973 to 1974. The planned trip will be his first challenge in 14 years, since he successfully sailed from Hawaii to the Kii Channel in western Japan on a wave-powered vessel in 2008.

Horie will sail from San Francisco to the Shin Nishinomiya Yacht Harbor, navigating the same course in the opposite direction from 60 years ago over about a 2½-month period. If successful, he will be the oldest person in the world to sail nonstop solo across the Pacific.

A new yacht, the 5.8-meter Suntory Mermaid III, will be built for the planned voyage. It has been designed by Ichiro Yokoyama, the son of the yacht designer of the original Mermaid.

Asked for the secret of his stamina, Horie said: “In my daily life, I don’t drink to excess and I don’t eat to excess. By sailing on the ocean, you end up naturally getting in shape.”