Bill Pinkney, the first Black sailor to circumnavigate the globe alone by the arduous southern route — rounding the five great capes of the earth’s southernmost points of land, most notably the fearsome Cape Horn — died on Thursday in Atlanta.
His death, in a hospital on a visit to Atlanta, was announced by Ina Pinkney, his former wife, who said he sustained a head injury in a fall earlier this week.
Cape Horn, the southern tip of South America, is where the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans meet in a treacherous scrum of churning waves battered by capricious winds called williwaws.
It is known as the Mount Everest of sailing, “a mystical, mythical way point,” as Herb McCormick, the former editor of Cruising World magazine, put it in a phone interview.
Those who round the cape become members of an elite club.
Persons:
Bill Pinkney, Horn —, Ina Pinkney, Cape Horn, Herb McCormick, Pinkney
Locations:
Atlanta, Puerto Rico, Cape, South America, United States