GOING IT ALONE

Not every day of his solo trans-Atlantic voyage was perfect. Sixteen days into the 25-day passage he spent nine hours rolling around in a greasy bilge fixing a maverick oil leak and rewiring his engine. He had to run the Diesel periodically to charge his batteries for power to run his navigation lights and the radio with which he received weather forecasts and entertained his friends ashore with emails of his adventure:

JOHN ATKISSONJohn Atkisson pilots Kestrel up the ICW.

After nearly surfing at an almost unbelievable 7.7 knots . . . in clear skies and moderate seas and big moon at night, 20 knots of East Northeast winds at the stern, and temperature about 82 degrees, there is serious question whether I will be content, when this is all over, to go back to . . . ashington . . . do begin to understand, though, why Bernard Moitessier after circumnavigating in the first [single-handed] Around-the-World Race, instead of sailing to the finish line port to claim his honors, just kept going, and going, and going. It is beautiful to a spiritual dimension out here . . .

[The] magnificent 625-square-foot tri-radial spinnaker is up . . . pulling Kestrel toward Martinique at just under 6 knots in only 8 knots of wind. Not bad for an old broad. Skies are blue, seas are moderate, and [the weather] promises more of the same for four days . . .

Was it difficult getting up the chute when I was alone? Yes. Will it be difficult getting it down, being that I am alone" Yes. Is it madness to be flying a chute when in the middle of the North Atlantic alone? Yes. Next question? . . .

He stole what sleep he could between regular scans of the horizon ("It takes 24 minutes for a fast ship to come down on you from when it's first visible") and had his radar rigged with a beefed-up alarm to wake him if anything unseen showed up. He saw trawlers in his dreams, but in the whole ocean passage east never once glimpsed a single other vessel.

HOME COMING

He had left the dock in Tenneriffe Dec. 1, 2006. He arrived in Martinique Christmas Eve. There he was met by Sawyer and their cat Beacon for a shore-side breather and a leisurely four-month cruise together up through the Caribbean, the Intercoastal waterway, and home.

Now back at his home in Washington, just nine blocks east of the U.S. Capitol, Atkisson has been surprised and strangely moved by how closely friends and acquaintances followed his voyage, and how much it seems to mean to them. He realizes now he's been sailing, in a way, for all those who never leave the dock.

Almost every sailor dreams of crossing an ocean some day, he notes, but by age 64 the dream for him was an imperative ("One of these days you're going to wake up dead" and at 66 I've done it, which puts me in a very exclusive little club. Am I proud of that? Hell, yes!"

But he was also sailing, he says, for Adrian O'Donovan, his Irish friend who died of liver cancer during his voyage.

"He was the first person I met on the dock in Crosshaven, and against all the odds he was almost exactly my age, and like me had hit the bottle hard for many years before giving it up.

"But what was really extraordinary about him is that boozers like me tend to be moody and get down on ourselves, even after we stop drinking. Adrian found delight in everything. He lived in a little tiny house and had a little tiny boat, had almost no money and had never crossed an ocean. But he saw everything in positive terms, particularly messing about in boats. One day when I was feeling down he looked at me with this big grin, hit me on the knee and exclaimed 'Johnno, isn't it great we can do this stuff!' And that put everything in perspective."

Atkisson mounted Adrian's motto on Kestrel's radio during the voyage. He says it's there to stay.