Route Planning My Solo Nonstop Circumnavigation
11 February 2026 · 27 min · 13K views · Port Townsend
Two sailors plot course on nautical chart aboard boat
What this video covers
Oliver, skipper of a Pacific Seacraft, sits down with Jerome Rand — who completed a solo nonstop circumnavigation in 271 days — at Port Townsend to plan Oliver's own solo nonstop circumnavigation.▶ 0:41 Using passage-planning charts, Rand walks through the full route west-about from the U.S. West Coast: roughly 20,000 miles across the North and South Pacific in trade winds and doldrums before hitting the Southern Ocean, rounding Cape Horn at 56 degrees south, crossing the South Atlantic staying near 40 degrees south, rounding the Cape of Good Hope while avoiding the Agulhas current, crossing the Indian Ocean just above the Roaring Forties, ducking under Cape Leeuwin and Tasmania, crossing the South Tasman Sea, passing south of New Zealand, then beating back north into the Pacific trades to finish.▶ 3:55 Target window for Cape Horn is December or January; total estimated duration is 240–270 days.▶ 7:23 Rand flags specific hazards: fuel exhaustion in the doldrums leaving the boat vulnerable to shipping traffic, bomb lows in the Southern Ocean summer, the Agulhas current off South Africa, the Great Australian Bight's erratic winds, and the punishing upwind slog home through the variables after New Zealand.▶ 1:58 Oliver plans to consult Randall Reeves on that final Pacific leg.▶ 18:27 A Raymarine radar is scheduled for mast installation before departure.▶ 22:49
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