Day 1080 + 7 [Sep. 24/11 JST] – Accolades for Saito-san


 Today's Report
Sep. 24/11 JST 

The emails and calls have been pouring in and so we'll devote today's update to those. They're in no particular order, but this first one comes from the most famous of all living sailors – Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, the first person to complete a non-stop solo circumnavigation.

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Please give my congratulations to Saito-san on yet another determined circumnavigation. His success will bring great pleasure to his many friends.

Sir Robin Knox-Johnston
UK

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In his message below, Hitoshi Hanaoka mentions his role in passing, but he did much, much more than merely interpret for Saito-san. He was instrumental in Saito-san's survival both on water and land during the 9 months he was in the Cape Horn area.

I know Saito-san has arrived in Japan through my partners in business. A lot of people will be so impressed by his achievement. I want to say some words to Saito-san.

I received a call from the Chilean Navy in April of 2 years ago. They asked me to come act as interpreter for a Japanese sailor after he had a problem near Diego de Almagro Island.

I have been working in the fishing business in here for many years and I know over a thousand island names, but I never heard of Diego de Almagro island, because this isolated island is 60 NM south of Cape Horn and smaller fishing boats cannot reach there.

A few months later, he had repaired his boat and tried to go back to Cape Horn and successfully pass it, but 48 hours after he passed the Cape, the main engine stopped, then a few hours later the generator stopped. He could use only the sails but then they were damaged by strong wind. Finally it was impossible to sail, but still he could control the boat near the entrance of the Strait of Magellan.

He fixed the boat and went out again -- two days later he hit a strong storm in the southern part of Chile, the Golfo de Pena. This time he could get through this storm. A lot of sailors died in that area and they could not go smoothly, I wondered.

A long time ago people thought that if you go more south from Cape Horn, it was the edge of this world and the entrance of nethermost Hell. That time the Diego de Ramirez island area where Saito passed was just the entrance of Hell.

However, the Cape Horn area is the hard part that could not stop Saito with his obsession and sailing technique.

This is the story I wanted to mention as I know it of Saito-san's most hard time starting from Diego de Alamagro as he went through the southernmost part of Chile.

Saito-san:
You really made it by west round-the-world sailing. Congratulations!

Hitoshi Hanaoka
Punta Arenas, Chile

Saito and Hanaoka
We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Hanaoka-san during this time when so many difficulties occurred. His company supplied free or much-discounted services as well as helped prepare NBSDIII for the several, and ultimately successful, attempts to transit Cape Horn.

Saito-san and we also owe a great deal to British and Spanish expats Rose Bliss and her husband, Pablo, for their affection, support, and frequent home-cooked meals (not to mention the occasional hot showers) provided to Saito-san over the frigid Chilean winter.

Rose, thank you for being Saito-san's "guardian angel" during this time!

Rose and Saito-san
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I know you will ecstatic when he finally arrives. Quite an achievement, not just for him, but for you and all the folks you managed, coaxed, and urged to stick with the adventure until the end.
Congratulations to all!

Boyd Gatlin
Starkville, Miss. USA

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After all this time Saito-san’s return seems quite an anticlimax – only those following the full epic story day-to-day from start to finish know what this 77 (almost 78) year old intrepid sailor achieved following the never-give-up spirit.

Having followed Saito-san’s progress from start to finish and suffered at least mentally with him the many setbacks it would be a privilege indeed to shake the great man’s hand and congratulate him personally on this stellar achievement.

Derek
Japan

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You and The Team cannot be congratulated highly enough on your fantastic efforts (and results!).

I am experiencing emotions that are difficult to describe knowing that this epic journey of immense courage, colossal internal strength, and masses of distinction are coming to a graceful end.

If you recall, I had the privilege of meeting Saito-San here in Cape Town (at the same time as Mike Perham and the subsequent signed picture that I forwarded to you), and following his voyages is something that words cannot attempt to describe.

Please forward my massive congratulations to this historic sailor.

Fair Winds To All!

Alan Hughes
Cape Town, South Africa

Autographed picture by Minoru Saito and Mike Perham (click to enlarge)


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I read in the newspaper that Saito-san had arrived at Yokohama safe.
Congratulations!

He is 77 years old! It is a remarkable thing! I thought that it took much courage to sail around the world. He showed me that one is never too old to fulfill one's dreams.

I'm very pleased that Saito-san and Hunter-san's dream came true.
Good for you!

Yuki Yoshioka
Tokyo

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Saito-san is to be congratulated both for a voyage very well completed and for his perseverance in doing so.  He faced each problem and challenge as it arrived and with patience and experience, resolved it and moved on.  It was both challenging and educational to follow his daily progress and reports and see what new lesson it would bring. Congratulations Saito for a job well done, even down to eking the last ounce of strength out of his tired sails as he completed the final miles (or kilometers!) through potentially stormy conditions.

It was a joy to see how many people had been following his progress after the successful end of the journey was announced by Chief Commander Frank Dvorak at the United States Power Squadrons Governing Board meeting first thing last Saturday (Sat 17 Sept) morning in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Kenneth Griffing
Past Commander
District 13
United States Power Squadrons
Hacienda Heights, CA

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Captain Saito, Hunter san:

Congratulations!!!!! He stayed alive and never gave up!

Thank you so much such a wonderful record each time sending me and so we could watch his activities over such a long period. All gave us full of hope and happiness. I am so glad to share this moment with many people and friends supported.

Much friendship with Fair Winds,

Mena Sato
(From a catamaran in Palau)

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I am thrilled for Saito-san and for all of you who have stuck with
him through the years!  Johnny and Abbi were captivated by his journey, and
his example of quiet, steady perserverance.  Please know how very much this
journey has meant for all of us, and please tell Saito-san that he was, and
is, an inspiration to many across the globe.

John Plewes, M.D. and family
USA

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We're all so thrilled that Saito-san has made it back safely after all this time. Please give him our best and tell him "Omedeto!" for us. What a wonderful accomplishment!

Susan and Aaron Farris
San Antonio, Texas

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Please tell Saito-san we are so happy he succeeded once again. It is so wonderful for people like us of our generation (you know, I am over 80 myself) to be able to see someone like him do such an amazing thing.

Luke and I were happy to see that that the goodluck rattlesnake charm Luke gave him worked again!

Tokio and Luke Rogers
(By phone from their ranch near Austin, Texas)

The crumbled remains of a rattlesnake charm carried on two circumnavigations
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So happy to read you are safe in Japan. We are all so proud of you here in Newport!!

God bless and keep you,

Barbara Brugman
Newport Rhode Island

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Terrific news!

Hope to have more time later to go through all the news. Please pass on our regards to Saito-san for this historic accomplishment!!

Nona and Pooch Pucciariello
Washington, DC

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Congratulations to Mr. Saito on another amazing accomplishment!

Mary South
Deputy Editor, YACHTING magazine

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Please forward my congratulations to Mr. Saito for a very impressive and inspiring adventure. We have written this piece about it: http://thesailblog.com/?p=460.

I would also like to be kept informed about Mr. Saito's coming adventures.

Jon Amtrup
Editor TheSailBlog.com

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Hi Hunter,

I recall Saito's getting by Cape Horn with an easterly only to have it turn into a long winter's "sleep" in Punta Arenas. Or before, in Cape Town, with the youngsters [solo circumnavigators Zack Sunderland and Mike Perham], each going his own way. And the earthquake etc., etc.

Home is the sailor, home from the sea
And the hunter home from the hill.

And you are off-watch! And a longer watch than expected....

Congratulations to all,

Robert M. Lux, M.D.
Concord, NH 03301

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Hi, Hunter san,
I am so happy to receive your message directly. In fact, my group SSCA (USA) searched for Kifu at that time, eventually found Mr. Saito in near Port Williams, thought he was the missing person, when a friend sent me a local newspaper article of about Mr. Saito's activities. They also congratulate him and it reminds all of missing Kifu at that time.
The family of Mr. Chinami now has accepted his accident. Thank you again for your support indeed.

Fair Winds, Mena

At the time Saito-san cleared Cape Horn, Keiichi Chinami was in his ketch Kifu on his own circumnavigation and sadly disappeared within a few hundred miles of Saito-san's position during a severe storm. Several weeks later we were able to help clear up confusion that occurred when it was thought that Chinami-san might have been the Japanese sailor reported at Puerto Williams, Chile, rather than Saito-san. We commented on this at the time. More can be read here. Our deepest condolences, again, to the family of Chinami-san who himself was an amazingly brave sailor from Japan on his own personal dream to sail the world.
  
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Hi Hunter….

What an amazing story for Minoru…you…and your team…I have never seen anything like it before!!...personally you deserve a medal!!...really…you held the whole thing together, so well done…Minoru will be swamped for sure with attention over the next few weeks…but some time when it is quiet please give him our best from Margie and me…we followed it in amazement…what a hero…we still have a laugh about that…but only Minoru will understand that…

I can imagine your life will change now…it has been a long three years hey!!!

All the best …warm regards and admiration for you both.

Don & Margie McIntyre
Hobart, Tasmania

Note:
This message, received from an island in the South Pacific, is from a dear friend of Saito-san's, going back to when they competed in the 1990 BOC Challenge. Don & Margie own and operate a marine service assisting nature studies in the frigid Southern Ocean and Antartic. (Maybe we're easily impressed, but Don is the only person we know with his own icebreaker!)

This is an article he wrote for Sailing World magazine.

Saito-san called him by Iridium the day after we got this message, to their mutual delight.

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Congratulations to Saito and your team!

Derek Nakamura
Honolulu, Hawaii

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Wow what a trip. What an ordeal. How is Saito San? Tell him we are proud and pleased to see he made it. He will always have a fond place in our hearts.  As you do also.

Ric & Ardell
San Diego, CA
(Formerly of Keehi Marina, Honolulu, living aboard several berths over from NBSDIII.)

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I'd really like to hear some of his stories; I’ll bet he has quite a few incredible tales.

Dennis Gans
USA

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This has been an amazing odyssey. We should be most thankful for folks like Hunter. Well done to all.
Thank you for including me in the journey.

All the best,
Dick Kyle
Past National Education Officer
United States Power Squadrons

This was forwarded to us by Ken Griffing, Past Commander of District 13 of the USPS. Saito-san is a member of Tokyo Sail & Power Squadron, a unit of D13.

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Congratulations due now...?

Hope Saito-san safely in port and finished now...!

Cheers,
Jeanne on 'Nereida'
Southampton, England
www.svnereida.com

Jeanne Socrates is the word record holder as the oldest woman to complete a solo circumnavigation at age 64, and was avidly following Saito-san even during her voyage. She endured her own hardships and her blog makes for some amazing reading on her own courageous accomplishments, including saving her vessel after it was rolled near the Falklands.

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We are very pleased to have been able to provide this service to Saito in his travels.  Congratulations on a successful voyage. 

Thanks,
Matt
SeaStar (A division of Geoeye, Inc.)

A plug for the company that provided the GPS beacon position reports, a paid service but one we valued four times a day for 3 years – and took tremendous comfort in as we tracked Saito-san during some very tense moments on the voyage. What a great assist to blue water cruisers (and their families)!

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This has all been so amazing. I cannot believe that so much has happened since we went up to Maine with him.

Please tell him "Congratulations!" for me. I look forward to the next time I can see him either here or in Japan.

Robert Brumfield
Spring City, Tennessee


(From his live-aboard houseboat in a lake in Middle Tennessee. Brother Bob was one of the drivers with Ken and Reyna Henry of Los Angeles, CA, Saito-san, Eiko and me, in our RV "expedition" to Maine to inspect prospective boats.)

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Congratulations to Saito-san, of course, but also to you and your team for a marathon effort over the past thousand-plus days.

Chris Pitts
Tokyo

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Aloha, here is a photo posted 6 minutes ago from Yokohama of his arrival.
Happy day for him and all that supported him
Congratulations Saito-san!

Cheers

Dave Cooper
Team Hawaii
Honolulu


Picture sent by Dave from the web

Saito-san and Dave Cooper
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Thanks so very much! All I can say is... YIIIPPPPEEE!!!!!

Scott Gilbert
Honolulu, Hawaii

Scott, Ed Abott, and Dave Cooper were the key people who gathered Team Hawaii together and relentlessly campaigned to get NBSDIII repaired (and Saito-san!) to make the final leg of the circumnavigation.

We reprint here the thank you email from Nico Roehreke, president of Nicole BMW, the main sponsor of Saito Challenge 8, expressing his appreciation to our volunteers in Hawaii:

Hello Dave and Team Hawaii:

Although we haven't had the opportunity of meeting in person, we certainly have a common friend. My great thanks to you and everyone in your team back in Hawaii. Without your selfless dedication, it simply wouldn't have been possible to ensure Saito-san's safe return during the last leg of his epic journey.

It has truly been a great adventure for everyone involved and I'm sure it will continue to live on in our hearts and minds as one of those rare and special moments in life when regular time stood still and allowed us to take part, for a fleeting moment, in one of the greatest adventures of our times.

Our gratitude and well wishes go out to you and every single one of your team.

Nico Roehreke
Nicole Group of Companies
Japan
  
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The list of people who assisted Saito-san -- in Japan, the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, South Africa, Punta Arenas, Chile, Valdivia, Chile, the Galapagos, Hawaii, Ogasawara Japan, and now again in Yokohama, as well as through encouragement and donations from all over the world -- is simply too long to post here.

But we're working on it!

Day 1080+2 [Sep. 19/11 JST] – Saito-san's Moment


Today's Report
Sep. 19/11 JST 

Position:  35°27'N, 139°39'E
Remaining to Yokohama:  0 nm / 100% finished

Flying the Japanese and U.S. flags, Nicole BMW Shuten-dohji III and her beaming skipper eased into Yokohama Harbor in 20-kt winds at 10:25 am Saturday, Sep. 17, to be greeted by a throng of supporters, well wishers, and media. It was one of those moments that are recorded digitally and forever in memory. And this was definitely Minoru Saito's moment.

Saito-san in his moment of triumph
Thanks in good part to today's "Respect for the Elderly" national holiday, but also of course to the remarkable feat itself, various newspapers carried brief articles the next day but as a visual it was hard to beat the sight of the rusted and battered NBSDIII slowly moving toward the pier. On Fuji TV, Japan's top TV network, the morning news show carried a surprisingly long telephone interview with him. You heard his voice, with no video of him talking, and that gave them plenty of time to show a number of amazing photographs from the trip, and not least, "before" and "after" photographs of the boat herself.

The visual image projected: How could anyone, not to mention an old guy of 77 years, manage to survive a 3-year journey that subjected a 25-ton steel yacht to so much punishment?

Nicole BMW Shuten-dohji III on arrival

Even before today's 6:30 am newscast, and another scheduled later today by TBS, another national network, Saito-san has apparently become something of a national hero. Yesterday afternoon we were with him at "Elephant Nose Park" a quayside area that has a double-level pedestrian walkway that looks down onto the boat and is close enough for many hundreds – thousands -- of passersby to take photographs, and many of whom call out "Omedeto (Congratulations)!" Their faces erupt in big smiles when Saito-san waves back and cheerily responds back, "Domo arigato!"

This IS of course, one of the big reasons for the circumnavigation, and for his oft-stated admonition to "Never give up!" which he immediately launched into in his welcome-home press interviews. It is just what Japan needs to hear in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, the tsunami devastation, and the nuclear-reactor(s) disaster that followed and is still very much a national crisis.

Japan has never needed a hero as it does now, someone to admire and see as an embodiment of the nation's ability to cope. Someone just a bit bigger than  life who can say something to the effect that "See, I could do it, and it wasn't easy, but so can YOU…" as the country gets back on its feet again, bowed, shaken, but still unbroken.

Coming soon: Photos from the homecoming. 

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For the next several weeks the Saito 8 Support Committee will have its hands full, working on at least these immediate goals:

1. Figuring out what might be done with NBSDIII, which honors her as well. At least initially she will be tied up at locations where she will be easily seen and remarked over. Later is the bigger question mark.

2. Arranging a celebratory party for Saito-san that, as one committee leader expressed it, "reflects the feeling that people have – not many people are in a celebratory mood right now."

3. Inviting the media, companies, community groups, and event organizers to enlist Saito-san as a person of great public interest, for special interest stories, speaking engagements, and personal appearances.

4. Express appreciation to the many people and communities who assisted him throughout the circumnavigation.

5. And perhaps help Saito-san, who gave up his apartment of 30-plus years to go to sea, to recover some semblance of off-the-water life. (For the moment he will live aboard, given special – actually extraordinary it just ain't done – permission to do so by the Yokohama Port Authority.)

Of course the one thing he keeps being asked is, "So what's next, Saito-san?" at which point he grins and launches into an idea (he always returns from the sea with these grand plans) to next do a north-south circumnavigation.

Why? Same reason as his "wrong way" voyage:

"I've never done it that way before!"

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We apologize for the several-days break in the Daily Log. We were away from broadband and caught up in the many media requests and several appearances of Saito-san, finally regaining some semblance of normalcy, thus this entry.