Long-time buddies Eric Bihl and Kennon Jones, both 32, quietly sailed their Tartan 34C into Fort Lauderdale’s Hall of Fame marina in mid June where friends and a fiancee awaited.

Their 885-day journey circumventing a globe rife with adventure was complete. After departing Fort Lauderdale in January 2018, they traveled 30,000 ocean miles crossing the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, stopping to explore countries in four continents.

Friends since college, the two had chronicled their adventures on social media. They described “being surrounded by elephants in the Umfolozi game reserve in South Africa, while in a tiny rental car, and living to tell the tale.”

And sailing in New Zealand where “the ranges of places to visit ... was phenomenal — and that’s just by water. Add in land travel and there really just isn’t a bad view in the whole country,” Kennon Jones told Wake Forest Magazine.

They even met up with a friend who just happened to be sailing within yelling distance of the Tartan, proving that the world can, indeed, be small at times.
The sailors met while attending Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC in 2007. Years later, when both were living in Washington, D.C., they hatched a plan to sail around the world.

While they were braced for a variety of catastrophes, a viral pandemic was not among them. As ports around the world closed to foreigners, the sailors had to cancel plans to visit Brazil. Instead, they stayed put in Saint Helena for several weeks before heading to the U.S. Virgin Islands, enroute to Fort Lauderdale.