Jon Sanders // 11-Time Circumnavigator

On the Wind Sailing

Andy Schell

Sports, Wilderness, Places & Travel, Society & Culture

4.8 • 593 Ratings

🗓️ 18 May 2021

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

#323. Jon Sanders is an 81-year-old Australian solo sailor whose been around the globe a full 11 times! He was the first person ever, in 1981/1982 to circumnavigate Antarctica, and indeed three of his roundings of the world happened back-to-back-to-back nonstop! Despite these crazy accomplishments, Jon remains incredible humble and sails simply for the love of it. Special thanks to Morgan Flower for setting up this interview and helping record & produce it with me!

ON THE WIND is presented by Edson Marine, "Making adventures happen since 1859." To find the highest quality bilge pumps, steering gear and other hardware just like we use on ICEBEAR & ISBJORN, go to edsonmarine.com.

BIG thanks to True North Designs for supplying the gorgeous solid oak furniture in the Mission Control container office in Sweden, where much of the podcast is produced!

True North designs & builds furniture in Denmark that is so beautiful that you want them at home and so strong that you can use them in your workplace. They are driven by the passion for beautiful functional design and good craftsmanship, and want to contribute to the renewal of the Danish design tradition together with a new generation of Danish designers.

Reach out on info@truenorth-designs.com if you have questions that you would like answered.

Join us on the 59º North QUARTERDECK, our online platform where members and the 'Admiralty' dive deep on the art of seamanship. New for 2021 is a monthly, members-only newsletter called THE SKIPPER'S BRIEFING, straight to your inbox with exclusive content, commentary, and a recap of the best of the past month on the Quarterdeck. There is nothing like it in sailing - join us at quarterdeck.59-north.com to become a better thinker, leader & sailor.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's 1114 Sweden time, but where I came from, it's still about 5.14 in the morning,
0:08.0	and I didn't get much sleep last night because I am now in charge of Axel at night, which is awesome,
0:13.0	but he still doesn't like to sleep through the night.
0:16.0	So I am feeling rather jet-lagged and a little bit loopy.
0:20.0	I'm on my third cup of coffee for the day.
0:22.4	I am sitting in my container office mission control here on the farm in Sweden, and it is
0:27.7	really, really nice to be home. As I record this, East Bjorn has headed off towards the Azores.
0:33.5	They're about 75 miles into their passage across Atlantic and they left yesterday afternoon.
0:39.2	Ice Bear, meanwhile, is getting ready to leave, hopefully today. I think they had a problem with
0:43.2	their starter motor on the engine. So fingers crossed, that's not too big of a problem. But KB's there
0:50.3	and Emma's there and the crew's there and they're ready to go back to Annapolis. So for the first
0:54.5	time maybe ever, I guess last year we did a couple trips where I was home, but this is like
1:00.4	our normal season. It's pretty cool to be to be in mission control and in charge of mission
1:05.1	control for the boats while they're away. So Godspeed and fast sailing to East Bjorn and Ice Bear. This episode with
1:13.6	John Sanders, if you don't know the name, John is an amazing guy. He's sailed around the world now
1:20.9	11 times. He's in his 80s. And I've known about him for a while now, but a podcast fan, Morgan,
1:27.0	actually reached out and said, hey, I've become friends with John, I'm an audio engineer myself, I'd love to help set this up. So it's perfect, so John and I talked, he was in Australia, I was in Pennsylvania at the time, at my dad's house, and Morgan recorded John's side and I recorded my side. And Morgan actually did the mix down on this.
1:45.5	So thanks a lot, Morgan, for helping out to set this up and to create the audio for it.
1:51.9	Anyway, I had an amazing conversation with John. He's one of these guys that just does what he does for the sake of doing it.
1:58.4	Not for any accolades or recognition or anything whatsoever.
2:04.2	Really interesting guy, really thoughtful, but at the same time, not very philosophical.
2:09.4	Just like, yep, I do it because I enjoy it, and that's all there is to it.
	...

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