It’s tough to make a list of the 10 saltiest sailors since Soundings started publishing 60 years ago. Our first list had dozens of possible candidates. Sailors like Lin and Larry Pardey had already been featured in previous anniversary issues, but to get it down to 10 sailors we had to make some tough choices. To ease our task, we threw in some additional salty souls in the list on page 66. We suspect you’ll think of someone we should have included. If so, drop us a line at [email protected], and we’ll publish your most persuasive arguments in a future issue.

Sir Francis Chichester

When the 65-year-old British yachtsman Sir Francis Chichester sailed into Plymouth, England, aboard his 54-foot ketch Gipsy Moth IV in May 1967, he became the first person to sail around the world alone via the great Capes, an accomplishment that made him as famous as the Beatles.

Chichester had completed the route of the great clipper ships, with a single stopover in Australia, and did it in 226 days. Upon his return to England, a half million people lined the shoreline to greet him. Along with Sir Francis Drake and Capt. James Cook, it made him one of England’s three greatest circumnavigators. Soon after he returned to England, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him with the same sword used to knight Drake in 1581.

Chichester was an entrepreneur and aviator. In 1929, he flew a de Havilland Gipsy Moth from England to Australia in 41 days and later became the first man to fly across the Tasman Sea. In the 1950s, his business made him rich enough to spend a lot of his time ocean sailing. In 1960, he won the first Observer Single-Handed Trans-Atlantic Race (OSTAR). Chichester was the archetypal eccentric Brit, which he showed during his 1966-67 circumnavigation. He donned a dinner jacket in the middle of the Atlantic to celebrate his birthday with a champagne cocktail.

In the end, he had no love for Gipsy Moth IV. He said she was very tender and required constant sail changing. He died of cancer in 1972 at age 71, but the “cantankerous” ketch survives him to this day, and she is also depicted on the inside back cover of all new British passports.

Éric Tabarly

Until the 1960s, the Brits were the best offshore racers. Then Éric Tabarly came along. In 1964, the French naval officer won the second OSTAR aboard his custom-built 44-foot plywood ketch, Pen Duick II. Tabarly beat a fellow Frenchman and 11 Brits—including Chichester who had won the first OSTAR four years earlier. Instantaneously, the square-jawed, muscular, uber-fit sailor became a national hero and a French legend. President Charles de Gaulle made him a Knight in the Legion of Honor and the French became permanently obsessed with ocean racing. Today, the French dominate offshore racing.

Tabarly grew up sailing in Brittany. He was given the family boat—an 1898 Fife-designed wooden cutter named Pen Duick—and volunteered for the French Navy. He earned his pilot’s license, and in 1954 fought in the First Indochina War in Southeast Asia.

After his 1964 OSTAR win, the French Ministry of Defense detached him to the Ministry of Youth and Affairs so he could sail full-time. In quick succession, Tabarly would win just about every ocean race out there, among them the Round Gotland Race, the Sydney to Hobart Race, the Falmouth-Gibraltar Race and the Middle Sea Race. In 1969, he’d win the single-handed Trans-Pacific race from San Francisco to Tokyo aboard Pen Duick V, a 35-foot lightweight, planing monohull that had a deep keel and used water ballast. Four years later, he and his crew would win the Cape Town to Sydney leg of the 1973-74 Whitbread Round the World Race.

In 1976, Tabarly and his 73-foot monohull Pen Duick VI faced 124 other entrants at the OSTAR start. Less than 24 days later, after losing radio contact, he appeared at the finish line first, even beating the multihulls.

Four years later, with a crew of three, he sailed the revolutionary hydrofoil trimaran Paul Ricard across the Atlantic in a little over 10 days, beating the 1905 Trans-Atlantic record.

He retired from the Navy in 1985 but continued to race. In 1997 he won the Fastnet, but a year later, while sailing the hundred-year-old Pen Duick to a Fife rally in Scotland he was swept overboard while reducing sail. Crew efforts to retrieve him were unsuccessful. His body was recovered five weeks later. He was 66.

Ted Turner

Most folks think of Ted Turner’s successful defense of the 1977 America’s Cup as his greatest sailing achievement, but Turner said winning the 1979 Fastnet Race loomed even larger.

During his career, Turner would win about 500 races; among them were the 1965 Flying Dutchman Worlds, the 1966 Southern Ocean Racing Conference overall championship, the 1970 5.5 Metre Gold Cup and the 1972 Sydney-Hobart Race.

In 1974, after a failed attempt to defend the America’s Cup, the media entrepreneur purchased Courageous, that year’s successful defender, and three years later brought her back to Newport to sweep Australia 4-0. It would be a walk in the park compared to the 1979 Fastnet Race, which capsized 75 boats and killed 15 sailors. Many boats hove to, but Turner and his crew pressed on aboard his 61-foot S&S-designed sloop, Tenacious, winning the race on corrected time.

Turner was driven to win and was just as famous for his salty language as his sailing. He had public battles with Dennis Conner, Lowell North and other famous sailors, earning him colorful nicknames, including Terrible Ted, the Mouth from the South and Captain Outrageous.

One of his longest-running feuds was with fellow media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, a dispute that had its roots in 1983 when the Murdoch-sponsored yacht Nirvana forced Condor, skippered by Turner, to run aground just six miles from the finish, costing him the win. At the post-race dinner, a drunken Turner verbally assaulted Murdoch, and later challenged him to a televised fistfight in Las Vegas.

Despite his mouth, his sailing got him into the America’s Cup Hall of Fame in 1993 and the National Sailing Hall of Fame in 2011. He remains the only person to win US Sailing’s Sailor of the Year award four times.

Today, the 85-year-old media magnate reportedly suffers from Lewy body dementia, but a few years after winning 1979’s deadly Fastnet Race, he explained what drove him to win, saying, “I was more afraid of losing than dying.” 

Dame Naomi James

In 1978, a little over a decade after Francis Chichester did it, 29-year-old New Zealander Naomi James became the first woman to circumnavigate via the great capes, proving that women could sail around the world alone too.

James grew up Naomi Power on a land-locked farm in New Zealand and was a hairdresser with zero sailing experience when in 1975 she met her future husband, sailor Rob James, in Saint-Malo, France. Two years later, she began her circumnavigation attempt.

Her trip was fraught with problems. Her radio went out, her kitten went overboard, and her self-steering failed. Heading to Cape Horn, not realizing that she had unclipped her safety harness, she slipped and nearly went overboard. Later, she almost lost the mast and three days later suffered a capsize in the Southern Ocean.

But she overcame every setback and in 1978 returned to a warm welcome in England where she was made a Dame Commander in the Order of the British Empire.

James continued to sail, breaking the women’s speed record for a single-handed crossing of the Atlantic during the 1980 Europe 1/OSTAR and winning the 2,000-mile double-handed Round Britain Race with her husband in 1982. The next year, he drowned in a nautical accident, 10 days before their daughter’s birth. Soon after, she quit sailing. She reportedly still lives in Cork, Ireland, where the couple had purchased a house shortly before his death.

Conny van Rietschoten

Until the 1977-78 edition of the Whitbread Round the World Race, most sailors had never heard of Conny van Rietschoten.The Dutchman grew up sailing, but in the early 1960s tuberculosis interrupted his life, his business career and his sailing.

He spent a year recovering in a Swiss sanitorium, but then threw himself into his family’s electrical engineering business. Within a decade, he sold the firm for a handsome price and at 45 years of age started looking for a fresh challenge.

In 1974, having read about the first Whitbread Round the World Race and knowing that his father had never realized his own dream of sailing around the world, van Rietschoten began organizing a Whitbread campaign.

He interviewed the 1974 competitors, undertook extensive trials, trained his crew and invested in research to improve crew clothing, rigs and weather forecasting techniques.

He commissioned a modern, Sparkman & Stephens custom-designed ketch, Flyer, which had a longer waterline and more sail area than a Swan 65 (a Swan 65 had won the 1974 race), and had her built in aluminum by Jachtwerf W. Huisman, known today as the superyacht builder Royal Huisman. Van
Rietschoten and his crew would win the 1977-78 Whitbread, making him a hero in the Netherlands.

Then he did it again. Four years later, with a new German Frers-designed maxi sloop called Flyer II, he returned with an international crew of professional sailors whose handwritten applications had been psych0-analyzed by a handwriting expert.

Flyer II won the first leg to Cape Town, but during the second leg van Rietschoten suffered a heart attack in the Indian Ocean. Flyer II’s onboard doctor wanted to call the cardiologist aboard their biggest rival, Ceramco New Zealand, but van
Rietschoten forbade it, swearing his crew to secrecy. “Ceramco was already breathing down our necks,” he would later say. “If they had known that I had a health problem, they would have pushed their boat even harder.”

Flyer II and Ceramco New Zealand would round Cape Horn together, but Flyer II would prevail, making van Rietschoten the only person to win the Whitbread Round the World Race twice and earning him the nickname, “The Flying Dutchman.”

Beloved by his crews, the master organizer died in 2013 but is recognized for professionalizing sailing. “He taught us how it was going to be done in the future and he introduced a professional business approach to offshore sailing,” said Grant Dalton, a member of the Flyer II crew. “He was indeed a pioneer.”

“Mau” Piailug

The Austronesians were some of the greatest navigators of all time, sailing across the Pacific and Indian Oceans for thousands of miles. Solely relying on their knowledge of the sun, stars, winds, clouds, the sea state and the wildlife they encountered along the way, they would find their way to remote islands without instrumentation. The knowledge was passed from generation to generation via oral tradition, but by the 1960s, most of it was being lost to time and technology.
It was Pius “Mau” Piailug, a Micronesian, who helped preserve the non-instrument wayfinding methods of the Pacific islanders. Piailug was trained in the ancient traditions by his grandfather and father and by age 18, he had become a palu, a master of non-instrument navigation. In his middle age, concerned that his skills would be lost, he approached the Polynesian Voyaging Society to preserve them.

In 1976, there were only six Polynesian navigators left, most of whom were reluctant to share their knowledge. That year, Piailug and a small crew sailed the Hōkūleʻa, a modern reconstruction of a double-hulled Hawaiian voyaging canoe, from Hawaii to Tahiti. Their success showed that intentional two-way voyaging throughout Oceania was possible and helped explain the Asiatic origin of Polynesians. Piailug would also sail from Tahiti to New Zealand and the success of his trips caused a revival of Polynesian navigation and canoe building.

He died in 2010, but today there are dozens of master navigators in Hawaii, New Zealand, Rarotonga and Tahiti who are able to find their way just like the Polynesians did centuries ago. Without Mau Piailug, that knowledge would be lost.

Sir Peter Blake

Peter Blake began sailing at age five. At 18, he built a keel yacht with his brother, and by age 20 he’d won the 1967-68 New Zealand Junior Offshore Group Championship.

At 23, he was a watch leader on the boat that won the Cape Town to Rio race, which is when Robin Knox-Johnston and other sailors recognized his sailing and leadership abilities. By 25, he was a watch captain in the first 1973-74 Whitbread Round the World Race, a role he reprised in the 1977-78 Whitbread.

In 1979’s deadly Fastnet, he won line honors, but lost to Ted Turner on corrected time. At 33, he skippered Ceramco New Zealand in the 1981-82 Whitbread where he finished second to Conny van Rietschoten, and at 41, won the 1989-90 race with the Maxi ketch Steinlager 2, sweeping line and handicap honors on all six legs.

Four years later, Blake and co-skipper Robin Knox-Johnston would set the Jules Verne record for the fastest non-stop navigation of the world while under sail.

Blake successfully managed New Zealand’s America’s Cup efforts in the 1990s, beating Dennis Conner 5-0 in 1995 and five years later successfully defending against the Italians with another 5-0 sweep.

In 2001, while on a trip in South America to monitor global warming and pollution for the United Nations, he was shot and killed by armed pirates. He was 53.

At his memorial service, New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Helen Clark, called Blake a national hero. “Our small nation went into shock,” she said. “Peter Blake was a living legend. As an outstanding sailor, he had brought great honor and fame to New Zealand. His death was unthinkable.”

His headstone bears the words of John Masefield’s famous poem, Sea Fever: “I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky. And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.”

Tracy Edwards

At its inception in 1973, the Whitbread Round the World Race was a man’s game. So, when in 1989, 26-year-old Tracy Edwards made it known that she was entering the 32,000-mile race with an all-female crew, she was relentlessly ridiculed by the male-dominated sailing establishment.

But Edwards found a 10-year-old Bruce Farr-designed 58-foot aluminum boat, got funding from King Hussein of Jordan, gathered a dozen women to prep the boat, renamed her Maiden, and set off for the starting line.

The yachting press was not kind. In fact, it was brutal. Bob Fisher, a writer for Britain’s The Guardian called Maiden and her crew “a tin full of tarts.” When Maiden won the New Zealand leg of the race, he doubled down by calling them “a tin full of smart, fast tarts.”

But Maiden would win a second of the six legs and place second overall in her class, showing the “boys” that the “girls” could do it too.

Edwards was made a Member of the British Empire and became the first female winner of the Yachtsman of the Year Trophy. As a result, sailing’s patriarchy would never be the same.

Dame Ellen MacArthur

Early in her sailing career, men called Ellen MacArthur “Little Ellen from Derbyshire.” Little did they know that over the next 15 years, the 5-foot, 2-inch sailor would beat them across the Atlantic and around the world.

In 1994, at 18, MacArthur was the youngest person in the United Kingdom to pass the Yachtmaster Offshore Qualification. At 19, she completed a solo circumnavigation of Great Britain.

At 20, in her first Trans-Atlantic race, she took third place in her class in the Quebec to Saint-Malo Race. And at 23, she beat 24 Open 60 monohull sailors in the renamed OSTAR to become the youngest-ever winner since Chichester won the inaugural event in 1960, and set a record for a single-handed woman that still stands today.

A year later, she completed the Vendée Globe, taking second place overall and setting a world record for a single-handed, non-stop, monohull circumnavigation by a woman.

The year after that, she won the Route du Rhum transatlantic solo yacht race and in 2004, sailed her trimaran, B&Q/Castorama, from New York’s Ambrose Light to Lizard Point, England, in 7 days, 3 hours, 50 minutes, which was also a new world record for a transatlantic crossing by a woman.

The next year, using the same 75-foot trimaran, MacArthur broke the world record for the fastest solo circumnavigation, male or female. During the 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes and 33 seconds that it took her to circle the planet, she never slept more than 20 minutes at a time.

For her accomplishment, “Little Ellen from Derbyshire” was named a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, the youngest-ever recipient of the honor.

During her sailing career she started raising funds for cancer research. Today, she runs The Ellen MacArthur Foundation to transition the world to a circular economy by eliminating waste and pollution to benefit all people and the natural world.

Kenichi Horie

Horie was an unknown 23-year-old when in 1962 he sailed his 19-foot plywood sloop, Mermaid, through California’s Golden Gate, making him the first person to sail solo and non-stop across the Pacific Ocean. His arrival was entirely unexpected. He had left Japanese waters without notifying his government and 94 days later arrived in San Francisco with no passport, no money, and little knowledge of English. He was arrested but freed by Mayor George Christopher, who presented him with a visa and a key to the city. When asked why he did it, Horie replied, “Well, I crossed it because I wanted to.”

In 1974, he circumnavigated from east to west, and also went around the planet a second time in the other direction. From 1978 to 1982, he circumnavigated vertically, visiting the Arctic and Antarctic on a 34-foot aluminum yacht.

Horie often used boats with environmental themes while subsisting on a diet of rice, curry, squid and fish caught along the way. He has crossed the Pacific seven times. He sailed a solar boat from Hawaii to Chichijima near Iwo Jima, sailed from Hawaii to Okinawa on a pedal powered boat, sailed from Ecuador to Japan in a solar boat made of recycled aluminum and in 1999 crossed the Pacific on a 33-foot catamaran made of 528 beer kegs welded end-to-end with masts made from recycled aluminum cans.

In 2002, he arrived in San Francisco from Osaka on a boat made from recycled whiskey barrels. And in 2008, he made a voyage across the Western Pacific Ocean in a wave-powered boat that averaged 1.5 knots over the 3,780-mile crossing. Two years ago, he single-handedly crossed the Pacific non-stop by sailing from San Francisco to Japan, becoming the oldest man to do so.

And he’s not done. “I want to do it again,” the 83-year-old said when he landed, “when I am 100 years old.” 

More Salty Souls

Robin Knox-Johnston

In 1969, Knox-Johnston would become the first person to complete an unassisted, non-stop single-handed circumnavigation of the world via the great capes to win the 1968-69 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race. (Chichester had made one stop in Australia.)

Kirsten Neuschafer

The South African won the 2022 Golden Globe Race, the first woman to win that non-stop event since its inception in 1968. The feat made her the first woman to win any round-the-world race via the three great capes.

Marvin Creamer

In 1984, the New Jersey geography professor became the first recorded person to circumnavigate the world without navigational devices. With a crew that rotated on and off the boat, Creamer navigated his 36-foot sailboat Globe Star using the same methods as the Polynesians, showing that it could be done anywhere on the planet, including around Cape Horn.

Dawn Riley

Riley served as a watch captain/engineer aboard Maiden, became the first woman to ever manage an entire America’s Cup syndicate and was the first American—man or woman—to sail in three America’s Cups.

Bill Pinkney

Born in 1935 and raised on the Southside of Chicago, in 1992, Pinkney became the first black person to sail around the world via the great capes.

This story was originally published in the June 2024 issue.