A Beautiful Life

When Keniche Horie was 23 years old, he sailed from Nishinomiya, Japan, to San Francisco, California, on a 19-foot plywood boat dubbed "The Mermaid" and became the first person in history to successfully make a nonstop journey across the Pacific Ocean. The year was 1962, and Horie was a sensation when he sailed under San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge after 94 days at sea surviving on rice and canned beans. Sixty years later, Horie has done it again: This past Saturday, June 4, Horie set a record at age 83 as the oldest solo yachtsman to sail nonstop across the Pacific Ocean.

"Don't let your dreams just stay as dreams," Horie said from a satellite phone as he completed the final leg of his voyage from San Francisco to the Kii Peninsula in western Japan last week. "Have a goal and work towards achieving this, and a beautiful life awaits."

Horie, whose 1962 boat is kept in a National Maritime Museum in California, sailed this time on a 19-foot sailboat called "The Suntory Mermaid III." He admitted that parts of his two-month journey across the world's largest body of water were challenging, although he called his family by satellite phone each day to check in.

Since his first solo journey 60 years ago, Horie has sailed the Pacific Ocean on a number of unique and environmentally friendly vessels: a boat powered by solar panels, another made entirely of aluminum cans and plastic bottles, and -- in 1999 -- a vessel built of beer kegs. While Horie does not call himself an environmental activist, he frequently argues that the ocean is an "irreplaceable source of life for the Earth."

An avid adventurer, Horie says he hopes to keep sailing until he is 100: "I didn't think I'd be sailing at 83, but I'm still healthy and I didn't want to miss this chance," he said. "Challenges are exciting, so I'd like to keep trying."

The Lord does not want us to live lives that are stuck, uninspired, or unchallenged; in fact, we are called to live joyfully, hopefully, and ever-pressing forward as we are transformed daily ever-closer to His image. Hear these words from the Gospel of Matthew:

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?" (Matthew 6:25-26).

What oceans will you sail this week, however rough, smooth, distant, or near?

God Bless,

Jennie