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500 Days Alone at Sea in a 12-Foot Yacht
September 6, 2026 · 14 min · 59K views
What this video covers
Serge Testa sailed an 11-foot-10-inch aluminum boat, Acrohoc Australis, around the world between June 1984 and May 1987, completing 27,000 miles in 1,071 days dock to dock, 500 of them at sea.Watch He welded the boat himself in roughly three months, having never crossed an ocean before departure.0:10 The circumnavigation covered the Indian Ocean, Atlantic, and Pacific, with roughly 20 stops; the longest layover ran two months in Venezuela waiting for a sat-nav his brothers funded.9:02 He taught himself celestial navigation from two books bought in Darwin six months into the voyage, achieving five-mile accuracy on noon sights alone.3:39 A fuel-bottle explosion between Réunion and Madagascar burned him with first-, second-, and third-degree burns; he went overboard, caught the moving boat, and re-entered through flames to retrieve the extinguisher.5:16 Four cyclones crossed his path in 58 days on the Indian Ocean leg.4:09 Barnacle growth on the slow hull nearly stopped him in the Eastern Pacific.7:45 He ran aground on Blouberg Beach within sight of Cape Town's harbor entrance after falling asleep at the tiller.6:38 Testa still holds the Guinness record for smallest wind-powered boat to circumnavigate — 3.6 meters — 40 years on, with Yann Canet's 4-meter 2019–2022 attempt leaving the record unchanged.0:29
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