24-Year-Old Is Japan's Youngest Round-the-World Sailor
A 24-year-old has become the youngest Japanese person to travel around the world alone in a yacht without stopping.
Hirotsugu Kimura completed his 52,000-kilometer, 231-day journey at the start of June.
He said he wanted to tell children how good it feels to have a dream and achieve it.
His mother said she was happy he had returned home!
Kimura began his journey in Nishinomiya, the city where he lives, just west of Osaka. He sailed south across the Pacific and around Cape Horn at the bottom of South America.
He then sailed on to South Africa's Cape of Good Hope before traveling toward Australia and back to Japan.
Before now, the youngest Japanese person to sail around the world alone was Kojiro Shiraishi, who was 26 when he did it in 1994.
To break the record, Kimura wasn't able to stop anywhere to get more supplies, so he only ate food he had packed onto his 12.5-meter yacht before he left.
Although he was alone, Kimura said being able to use the internet was helpful. This allowed him to share news with people back home, and to ask for advice if he needed help with the boat, named Miranda.
Kimura, who works for a recycling company in Osaka, first tried to sail around the world in 2022, but had to stop because of problems with his boat.
His company helped pay for his trip.
The youngest person to travel solo around the world without stopping is thought to be Australia's Jesse Martin, who was 18 when he did it in 1999.
