Kenichi Horie

He also translated the book Ice Bird: The first single-handed voyage to Antarctica by Australian adventurer David Lewis into Japanese.

In 1962, at the age of 23, Kenichi Horie sailed alone across the Pacific Ocean from Japan to San Francisco aboard a 19-foot (5.8 m) plywood sailboat called the Mermaid.

Despite Horie's best effort to legally depart from Japan, and because of the lack of precedent for international travel on a small sailboat, he was not able to obtain a passport or an adequate amount of foreign currency.

The boat, Malt's Mermaid II, designed by Kennosuke Hayashi, was a 32.8-foot (10.0 m) long, 17.4-foot (5.3 m) wide, catamaran constructed from 528 beer kegs welded end-to-end in five rows.

In 2008, Horie travelled solo from Hawaii to the Kii Peninsula in western Japan aboard the 9.5-meter, 3-tonne catamaran Suntory Mermaid II, built at Tsuneishi Shipyard [ja].

Kenichi left Honolulu on March 16, 2008, and completed the 110-day solo voyage at the port of Wakayama in the channel between Honshu and Shikoku islands before midnight (1500 GMT) Friday, July 4, 2008.

His yacht used wave energy to move two fins at its bow and propel it forward, and sailed at an average speed of 1.5 knots.

"[1][10]1964 - The first Polena della Bravura (The Figurehed of Bravery), an award estabilished in 1964 be the Municipality of Sanremo and the Italian Navy to celebrate memorable feats al sea.