Rescued round-the-world sailor recounts ordeal

updated 8:40 a.m. ET Jan. 8, 2007

PUNTA ARENAS, Chile - An American sailor whose round-the-world journey was frustrated by a yacht-destroying storm reached land on Sunday, saying he’s “doing very well” and didn’t regret having make his attempt to circle the globe alone nonstop.

Looking relaxed and calm, Ken Barnes said he didn’t have much time to think about his situation after a storm left him adrift for three days more than 500 miles from the Chilean coast, west of the Straits of Magellan.

“I was kind of busy,” he said. “I had not much time to think.”

Barnes was brought to Punta Arenas by aircraft after he was rescued by the fishing trawler Pesca Polar 1, backed by Chilean navy aircraft.

The 47-year old solo sailor from Newport Beach, Calif., told reporters in Chile’s southernmost city that he didn’t regret trying to become the first solo sailor to circumnavigate the world nonstop from the U.S. West Coast.

But he said that if one of his daughters thought of doing the same thing, he’d tell her, “It wouldn’t be a good idea.”

He said he was recovering well from a wound suffered when the storm flipped his 44-foot ketch, Privateer.

Still, Chilean Navy. Capt. Ivan Valenzuela, who accompanied Barnes at his news conference at the local airport, said he would be taken to a local military hospital for a thorough checkup.

U.S. Embassy officials who traveled here from Santiago were to arrange details for Barnes’ trip back to California, probably as early as Monday.

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