Australian-born, Dutch solo-sailor, Mark Slats was hours away on Christmas Eve 2018 from being the first Golden Globe Race 2018 participant to complete a sailing circumnavigation. Instead, he made a 90 degree turn to avoid being the first racer in the 2018 contest to do so. If he does not tack back in the next day or so, he may never complete the circumnavigation until he reaches the northern hemisphere.
Of all the competitors still in the race for 32-to-36-foot heavy displacement sailboats, Slats sailed the most western course down the South Atlantic early on in the race. He has been on a long northeast tack well offshore of Brazil that brought him within 100 nautical miles of his outbound track, but then early on December 24, 2018, UTC he turned to the northwest sailing away from his outbound track. He is close to his farthest west portion of his track. Slats is the only competitor thus far to have sailed all 360 degrees of longitude. Unfortunately, one of the requirements of circumnavigation, according to the commonly accepted definition adopted by the Guiness Book of World Records and others, is that you start and end at the same place, which Slats and no other competitor has yet done in the 2018 Golden Globe Race.
In the 1968 Golden Globe Race, three competitors completed circumnavigations. Bernard Moitessier, Sir Robin Knox Johnston, and Nigel Tetley. Nevertheless, Moitessier and Tetley never finished the race. Moitessier crossed his outbound track for the circumnavigation near Cape Town on March 18, 1969. Moitessier decided to sail to Tahiti instead of finishing the Golden Globe Race in England. South African-born, English sailor Nigel Tetley crossed his outbound track in the North Atlantic before his trimaran sunk about 1,200 nautical miles from the start in England. Tetley was rescued in his life raft. Sir Robin Knox Johnston of England would not complete the race until April 1968 after 312 days at sea.
It is unclear if Slats is aware of how close he was to a circumnavigation after 176 days at sea. The participants navigate by sextant and are not allowed to access the race tracker. Thus, his celestial fixes may have been too inaccurate or infrequent to tell him that he could have completed a circumnavigation on Christmas Eve 2018. The 41-year old Slats completed his first circumnavigation under sail in 2005. Slats is in second place and trailing race leader Jean Luc Van Den Heede of France by about 700 nautical miles If you have a ham radio, tell Mark Slats to tack to the northeast for a day.
SLOW BOAT SAILING 
Yacht racing defines a world circumnavigation to be a passage of at least 21,600 nautical miles (40,000 km) in length which crosses the equator, crosses every meridian and finishes in the same port as it starts… If he crosses his track earlier than that it doesn’t constitute a circumnavigation.
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Crossing the outbound track is the port where it starts. Also don’t forget the antipode rule…
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But he must cross his track in the northern hemisphere, so he isn’t quite there yet..
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He did cross the equator at the beginning of his voyage, but that was before the “beginning” of the trip at the close cross-track point around 20s.
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The exact rule, according to the WSSRC:
“To sail around the World, a vessel must start from and return to the same point, must cross all meridians of longitude and must cross the Equator. It may cross some but not all meridians more than once (i.e. two roundings of Antarctica do not count). The shortest orthodromic track of the vessel must be at least 21,600 nautical miles in length calculated based on a ‘perfect sphere’. In calculating this distance, it is to be assumed that the vessel will sail around Antarctica in latitude 63 degrees south.
A vessel starting from any point where the direct orthodromic distance is too short shall pass one single island or other fixed point on a required side so as to lengthen his orthodromic track to the minimum distance.”
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A circumnavigation that starts in the northern hemisphere must cross the equator on the way south and then cross the equator again on the way north before crossing its track… The point where they cross must be a physical point (island, buoy or port), it can’t just be a random point.
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I think is we say the “beginning” is the cross-track and don’t count the Northern Hemisphere sailing that comes before towards antipodal rule then Moitessier did not circumnavigate either.
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That’s correct, Moitessier never circumnavigated the world.
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The only thing that Moitessier circumnavigated was Antarctica.
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