In the early 1930s, Pye and his wife Anne (married in 1936) bought a 30 ft Polperro Gaffer fishing vessel built by Ferris of Looe called Lily for £25.
The decision was the combined result of being unhappy with the prospect of the nationalisation of the British health system and the serendipitous encounter with a book that was to change his life.
Peter and Anne sailed around the world for the next twenty years, demonstrating that 'log, line and lookout' were more important to a life at sea than any number of modern gadgets.
Pye, alongside US photographer, journalist and yachtsman Carleton Mitchell, has been said to symbolise a key change in the history of yachting in the West Indies.
While The Sea is for Sailing takes Moonraker from Fowey to the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific to the Marquesas and Hawaii, to British Columbia and back home.