David Vann's Solo Circumnavigation

Ugly got me reading Esquire magazine several months ago. The scope and novelty of the articles, from profiling Frank Sinatra to the $20 Theory of the Universe, is something that other men's magazines tend to lack.

The latest of these worth noting is David Vann's I Do Not Have a Death Wish. Building a 50-foot trimaran out of his backyard, and on a $25,000 budget, Vann is planning to leave from Long Beach, California at the end of December, in what he hopes, will be a 4-month solo trip around the world.

"My project has extreme constraints: I'm trying to spend only $25,000 for a boat that will sail nonstop around the world, covering twenty-five thousand miles in four months. It will have to sail fast in light air in the equatorial regions and also survive fifty-foot seas and hundred-knot winds in the terrifying Southern Ocean as I sail around Antarctica. And I'm building the boat myself, quickly, in a month or two, so it's flat bottomed, with straight sides, and as skinny and light and simple as possible."