Around the world in 1,000 days
Artist and adventurer Zhai Mo takes as his model the intrepid heroes of the martial arts of Louis Cha, and he takes it a lot farther than most people. The 42-year-old has even sailed off into the sunset, becoming the first man in China to circumnavigate the globe in a small, motorless sailboat in a voyage from January 6, 2007, to August 26, 2009.
From artist to voyager
Before being addicted to navigation, Zhai was an artist who specialized in impressionist oil paintings. He is interested in various cultures and has held exhibitions around the world.
At an exhibition in New Zealand in 2000, Zhai had his first experience with a sailboat. An old Norwegian artist showed him his sailboat and told him about how he’d circumnavigated the globe one and a half times in it.
“If you buy a boat, you are the captain. You can go any place you want to go,” the Norwegian artist told to Zhai.
That kind of free lifestyle attracted Zhai, and he made up his mind to become a voyager on the sea. He spent his savings of about 400,000 yuan ($60,775) to buy a secondhand sailboat on an island near Auckland, New Zealand. He asked the seller to sail the boat back to Auckland with him, and in that five-hour voyage Zhai learned how to steer a sailboat for the first time.
Zhai’s first trip was to Tahiti, and it was not a lucky voyage. He encountered a class-11 gale, drifted at sea for 28 days, and finally arrived at Fiji in the South Pacific Ocean.
“While I was drifting at sea, I thought that no matter which island I got to, I would open a Chinese restaurant there and no longer voyage,” Zhai said.