Vito Dumas

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Vito Dumas (September 26, 1900 - March 28, 1965) was an Argentine single-handed sailor.

In 1942, while the world was in the depths of World War II, he set out on a single-handed circumnavigation of the Southern Ocean. He left Buenos Aires in June, sailing Lehg II, a 31-foot ketch named for the initials of his mistress. He had only the most basic and makeshift gear; he had no radio, for fear of being shot as a spy, and was forced to stuff his clothes with newspaper to keep warm. He made the first single-handed passage of the three great capes, and the first successful single-handed passage of Cape Horn.

With only three landfalls, the legs of his trip were the longest that had been made by a single-hander, and in the most ferocious oceans on the Earth; but most of all, it was a powerful retort to a world which had chosen to divide itself by war.^[1]

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