This Adventurous Canadian Man Sails Around The World All By Himself For 265 Days

For 265 days at sea, he managed to survive without GPS or electronic assistance, with only an old-fashioned sextant, log tables, and pen and paper.

Ter Hart embarked on the voyage through the five great capes on his 13-meter boat named the Seaburban, in October of last year. He stated: “I’ve always had this admiration for early explorers. One of the most effective ways you can experience what explorers and early sailors experienced is to use a sextant. The boats are different, the sailcloth is different, and as you would expect, the clothing is also majorly different. Everything is different apart from figuring out where you are since they did it precisely the same way.”

“And you’re going to have exactly the same worries: Am I where I think I am? Am I going to be able to see the land where it’s supposed to be? That part of the whole thing, you can relive pretty much exactly because you’re using technology that hasn’t changed since the 1700s.” The 62-year-old man grew up sailing (his dad was a surveyor and he helped him get his sea legs at a very early age), and he actually has a degree in oceanography. He also sailed to the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska with this same boat before.

In an interview made via a satellite phone from sea, he also said: “This thing I’m doing, a non-stop circumnavigation all by myself via the five great capes, is very difficult to do. I chose to do something incredibly difficult to make my mark, I think, on a personal level. On a deeper note, I wanted to inspire people to choose and seek careers in oceanic sciences...to solve the problems we need to face if we actually want to succeed as a species.”

He had to face dense fog with no idea of where he actually is and turbulent weather that led to “insane” sailing conditions. “I have to remind myself all the time that I can’t let my guard down. I’m very away from home. The obstacles are constant all the time and they are changing all the time. So I’ll feel safe and at home when I reach the dock.”

He’s been named the champion of social distancing. A lot of people have asked ter Hart about what it’s been like to be living in isolation. He said there’s a difference between being alone and being lonely. He stated in a blog post: “Alone and peaceful, bathed in splendor, you can pretty much feel the pulse of the world. There’s pretty much nothing between you and the heartbeat of the universe.”

He’s learned that a lot of things-some specific relationships, the noise of the world, daily routines- are not really as important as they may appear and can be shed away like a snake’s skin. “What’s left are those things that actually mean something to you, those things that you seriously were passionate about, the people you did really care about, and relationships that are the most important to you.”

It’s those people, such as his family, that he’s very excited to meet again now, including his father. He added: “I want to shake his hand and look right in his eyes and say I managed to do it. To see those people you actually care about is going to be beyond exciting and it will be a moment in my life I’ll take to the grave.”

On July 18, 2020, after almost nine months on the open ocean, he turned back to Canada. With a tiny bit of help from his sister, who contacted border agents, he managed to enter the country, spared from quarantine requirements. His loved ones welcomed him.

He said: “It’s definitely unbelievable. It took me 265 days to complete it, and it went by in a total and utter blink. I feel as if I just left yesterday. I look at my track on a globe or the oceanic chart I kept and simply say, ‘I couldn’t possibly have done that.’ So the sense of accomplishment is not really there since I’m in this weird temporal space right now where I just left yesterday.”