After 455 days, Jon Sanders sails home to a lockdown
West Australian sailing legend Jon Sanders has arrived home in Perth after a 455-day journey around the globe.
West Australian sailing legend Jon Sanders AO OBE has arrived home in Perth after a 455-day journey around the globe.
The 81-year-old has completed 11 sailing voyages around the globe, this time to raise awareness about the amount of plastic in the ocean.
Some 50 yachts went out to meet Mr Sanders on his arrival home, before being instructed to return home by 6pm for the official start of Perth’s five-day lockdown.
Mr Sanders will spend his first night in Perth in his boat as there was not enough time for him to get back to his apartment, a spokesman said. “We had to curtail the welcome home,” he said.
“Funnily enough, every port he sailed into there was quarantine, so he was excited to finally come to WA. Now — another COVID lockdown!”
Mr Sanders left Fremantle on November 3, 2019, with his boat, the Perie Banou II, fitted with an array of equipment to collect water samples throughout the voyage, including areas well outside the major shipping lanes typically targeted by researchers.
The testing equipment collected 200L of seawater samples a day, which scientists from Curtin University will use to establish a baseline in the levels of micro-plastics in the world’s oceans.
The first leg of Mr Sanders’s journey took him from Perth to Mauritius, where he hit the worst storm of his trip, with winds that exceeded 120km/h.
Having to heave a heavy car tyre across the stern to slow the boat and ride out gale-force winds, he took shelter in Port Elizabeth.
Shortly after, headed to Sint Maarten, an island east of Puerto Rico, he hit his first COVID lockdown. Mr Sanders spent three months on the island, before finally let out to travel to the Panama Canal.
He journeyed to Tahiti next and then finally Bundaberg, Queensland, where he was granted a quarantine exemption by the government as he had been at sea for 34 consecutive days.
He then made his way down the east coast before arriving in Albany, from where he set off for Dunsborough, Western Australia.
After two weeks moored in Dunsborough, Mr Sanders departed for Fremantle, his final stop, where he arrived about 2.30pm on Sunday.
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