The British Jimmy Cornell, aged 80, will go around the world
Jimmy Cornell at 80 years of age, will go around the world, in the 45-foot “Aventura zero” catamaran, a replica of the first round the world trip five hundred years ago Juan Sebastián Elcano.
Jimmy Cornell, 80-year-old ship captain and journalist, a legend in the world of sailing, will go around the world in an electric sailboat that generates its own energy and emits zero carbon dioxide emissions.
Docked in Seville, the catamaran “Aventura zero” will set sail next week with Cornell and three crew members to do exactly the same route that 501 years ago an armada of five ships began in Seville under the command of Elcano.
The ship, when sailing pushed by the wind, generates its own energy with a propeller, which is enough to cook, light up and the navigation elements, explained the British Cornell, who pays the adventure herself.
The catamaran aims to sail 30,000 miles in about nine months.
With the initiative, he wants to highlight the growing concern for the environment and carry around the world a message that he defines as “One planet, one future.”
The project is called El.CA.NO Challenge “Electricity. Carbon. No”
Jimmy Cornell, who was a journalist for the BBC, sailed 200,000 miles three times around the world, as well as on trips to Antarctica and the Northeast Passage.
Author of the international bestseller “World Crusing Routes“, with more than 250,000 copies sold, Cornell has organized transatlantic rallies, five around the world and one round the world regatta for 38 years, involving more than 3,000 boats and 15,000 sailors.
Cornell, born in Romania, from where he emigrated to England, also organized the “America 500” crossing on the occasion of the V Centenary of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America in 1992.
In this first round-the-world aftershock, Cornell wants to collaborate with oceanographic institutes and research centers to deploy buoys and transmit meteorological data on the effects of climate change.
The forecast is to sail from Seville to the Canary Islands and then go directly to the Strait of Magellan because the covid prevents them from stopping in Brazil and Argentina. Then they will go to Guam, in the Pacific; the Philippines, where they killed Magellan, Brunei, Moluccas and Timor, where they will sail non-stop, to South Africa, as did the navigators of the first round the world, to continue to Cape Verde and again to Seville, after which they will a symbolic detour to Getaria, in Guipúzcoa, where Elcano was born.
