What do you need to buy your own sailboat and sail around the world? Million dollars? Sailing license? For some, it's enough just to be obsessed with the idea of going out to sea under sail. A sailboat can be built from improvised materials. There would be a desire.

1. Gvozdev Evgeny Alexandrovich

One of the brightest travelers of our time built a tiny sailboat on the balcony of his apartment. He circled the world three times. For the first time on a regular walking dinghy "Lena".

This swim was included in the Guinness Book of Records. No one else before or after Gvozdev dared to go out into the ocean on a pleasure boat.

The second time Gvozdev went around the world on a makeshift sailboat "Said" when he was 65 years old.

The sailboat was so small that at the beginning of the great Pacific crossings, supplies cluttered up the whole space. Gvozdev did not fit in the cabin; during the nights, the legs remained outside. The third trip was not completed. A fearless sailing enthusiast died during a severe storm near Naples. Friends recall that he always wanted to go to sea, as if he wanted to stay there forever.

2. Jerry Spies

A schoolteacher from Minnesota dreamed of the sea since childhood. For seventeen years he made drawings, built boats and went on them, preparing for a big voyage.

Jerry built the famous "Yankee Girl" out of old plywood boards that cost him twenty dollars.

At the age of 39, Jerry crossed the Atlantic in 53 days on this sailing sailboat. Two years later - the Pacific Ocean.

Driving a sailboat has never been easy for him. Sleep problems, hallucinations, frequent storms, washed overboard during one of them.

After that, Spies said that he was stopping long-distance voyages because "it's too hard to live on the edge 24 hours a day."

He entered the Guinness Book of Records as the only person in the world who single-handedly crossed both oceans on a homemade sailboat only 3.05 meters long.

Co-authored with Martin Bree, Jerry wrote the books Was My Boat So Small? and Alone Against the Atlantic.

3. Serge Testa

The Italian-Australian circumnavigated the world from Brisbane through the Panama Canal in 500 days on the sailing sailboat Akrok Australis, which means "Australian Thing" in Italian.

Testa built the boat according to the drawings that "came in his head." The construction took 200 kg of sheet aluminum. "Thing" turned out to be 3.6 m long.

Tests lay ahead of him. Weeks of unhealed sea salt wounds, several groundings, four cyclones in a row, and a cabin fire that nearly killed him. Against all odds, after a three-year absence, the tiny Akrok returned to Australia with a win. And Testa described the journey in the book, which he called “500 days”.

4. Tom McLean

A well-known English sportsman and adventurer by nature, Tom McLean sailed on the Giltspur sailboat from Newfoundland (USA) to Falmouth (UK). The length of the sailboat was only 2.97 m, and the transatlantic crossing on it became a world record. A year later, McLean, using a chainsaw, shortens the Giltspur to 2.41 m. He managed to cross the Atlantic and beat his record.

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