Today
Going home is going in a year
We found out about this incredible story by accident – we came across the web on an essay published in The Royal Gazette that comes out in Bermuda.
The hero of this essay, the American Dustin Reynolds, has been traveling alone for several years around the world under sail. Started in Hawaii, where he lives. Then there were Australia and New Zealand, Indonesia and Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Madagascar and South Africa, St. Helena and Barbados. Now here is Bermuda.
Incredible in this story is this: the 41-year-old Reynolds is a double amputee. He has no left arm and left foot.
In 2008, Dustin on a motorcycle had an accident: he was hit by a truck (later it turned out that the driver was dead drunk). Reynolds was taken to the hospital. Doctors determined that the poor fellow had practically no chance to survive: injuries were too severe and numerous. This was reported to his parents.
But Reynolds survived. Let him lose his arms and legs.
And when, finally, after many months he left the hospital, he began to look for what to do with himself. And, leafing through a book that he accidentally saw about sailing, he discovered that double amputees never walked around the world. So Dustin decided what would be the first.
He was not at all embarrassed that he had never run a yacht before. But in a previous life, Dustin had a motor boat. So, some skills were present. You can learn the rest.
And I learned. First I read books about yachts and watched the stories on Facebook. Then he went from theory to practice and, together with a friend, described a loop around the Hawaiian Islands. And in 2014, he set off around the world. Solo. For starters, I went from Hawaii to the atoll of Palmyra. This, by the way, is a thousand miles.
Dustin is coming, of course, with stops. He enjoys new countries and new people. Although these people are far from always friendly. So, in the Solomon Islands, the Reynolds boat was attacked twice by pirates.
He is going to return home in a year. Still going to write a book about his adventures.
God give him good luck!
80 Today # 9710
Chief Editor
goinghomeyear
What do you think?