Blind Japanese sailor successfully completes non-stop Pacific crossing

Great! Congratulations! This time the whale was wise enough to dive.

Now it's time to adopt Seagull, favourite animal of a Sailor.

How can you not see a whale?

I was ready to post a positive comment after reading the title, but then read he did it with a “sighted navigator” which led to 2 questions: How is this significant if he didn’t really do it on his own? Also, with modern GPS technology and software accessibility progress, couldn’t he still do it without a sighted navigator? The bit about people coming together being able to do anything seems like a bit of a cop-out. Sighted sailors can do solo trips. I’ll bet with the proper gear blind sailors could do the same.

sourpuss - are you being cynical or just baiting?

14,000km in 2 months across the Pacific solo and blind should be no probs with tech!!!!!!

And there are set rules for such accomplishments if a record is to be claimed. Amongst them is that the sighted assistant can advise, but the blind person must steer and navigate.

And how terrifying it must have been when they hit typhoon like conditions with howling winds and giant swells as they neared Japan.

Those two both operate in a league far beyond what I can imagine.

Congrats : Blind Japanese sailor successfully completes non-stop Pacific crossing*

*actually, having a navigator makes this no feat at all

The smile on Iwamoto's face in the clips I saw was something else. His words were simply funny and uplifting. Sir, you are a nutter - I salute you!

*actually, having a navigator makes this no feat at all

Yeah right! I mean, he only crossed the ocean in a small boat. What a pathetic rube.

@Browny1

Of course I was being cynical. Check out my handle. ;-)

Navigating is not just being along for the ride on this, it's pretty much half of the job. And Iwamoto was not navigating, so basically, this was a two-man crossing of the Pacific. Fine in its own right, but the headline is giving all the credit to a man who essentially performed only one of the roles in a two-man crew.

Another Japanese, Kenichi Horie, sailed the Pacific solo in 1962 without the advantages of computers, GPS and weather satellites that we have today. The second part of what I was saying, in case you skimmed my post too quickly, is that with accessibility training, these very technology could be used to enable blind sailors to cross on their own.

He isn't being celebrated as crossing the ocean in a small boat. He's being click-baited as a blind guy who somehow did it on his own (opps, well there was a navigator with sight who could tell him what to do).

It's the equivalent of saying a blind man drove across Japan when there was a navigator sitting in the passenger seat telling him where to go and when to turn (and it's an 8 lane highway the whole time with almost no other cars on the road or nearby).