This is a day worthy to be remembered in the history of Chinese navigation. Zhai Mo, China's first person to complete the global navigation by single-person and non-motivated sailing boat, drove his "Rizhao" unpowered sailboat back to Rizhao of Shandong Province after navigating 35,000 nautical miles on the boundless sea for two years.
January 6, two years ago, was the very place where Zhai Mo set off from. He followed the routes of the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, South China Sea, Indian Ocean, Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean, and passed through more than 40 countries and regions of Asia, Africa, South America, North America and Oceania to complete the amazing journey of round-the-world navigation that astonished the world.
Before the age of 30, Zhai Mo knew nothing about navigation. He had been a painter with some fame in the cultural circle. In his small studio at Songzhuang of Beijing, he quietly depicted his ideal in his heart. In 2000, when holding a painting exhibition in New Zealand, he accidentally found a sailboat without power. For Zhai Mo who loved exotic culture, driving such a ship to travel around the world became his dream. Zhai Mo could not wait to ask some experts in foreign navigation circles all kinds of questions, but received only contemptuous looks.
Zhai Mo: Their meaning was very obvious. Even professional navigators in China are not sure to achieve it, let alone you as a newcomer. I thought at that time that you should not look down upon me, I will make it to show you.
Selling his cherished works, Zhai Mo bought a second-hand sailboat from his friend and started training. Holding the helm was absolutely not as easy as holding the paintbrush. On the vast sea, he experienced fear for the first time.
Zhai Mo: You can survive under extremely bad weather, this is a kind of beauty.
Through hard marine training, Zhai Mo gradually mastered the skills of long-distance navigation, and successfully completed the plan to navigate around the territorial waters of China. During the five years of preparation for circumnavigation, he never forgot the shaking heads of foreign navigators towards him. The belief to navigate around the world became increasingly firm in Zhai Mo's mind.
Before departure, he thought of buying an insurance policy for himself in case of contingencies, and the beneficiary was his mother. However, no insurance company dared to insure him.
Zhai Mo did not dare to tell his mother about his idea because he knew that his mother's greatest wish was to hope that her son would live a stable life and she could have a grandson in her lifetime.