Mike Horn

The Voyage

Mike Horn is the modern face of long-form solo exploration. He first came to public attention in 1999–2000 with Latitude Zero — a six-month solo circumnavigation along the Equator without motorised transport. He followed that with Arktos (2002–04), a 27-month traverse of the Arctic Circle, again without motorised transport. In 2008 he commissioned Pangaea, a 35-metre purpose-built steel-hulled expedition sloop capable of operating from Antarctica to the high Arctic, and used her as the platform for a four-year global youth-expedition programme. In 2017 he and Børge Ousland completed the first unsupported winter crossing of the Arctic Ocean — 87 days on the ice.

The Stewardship

The Pangaea programme is explicitly built around taking young people into wild places, on the principle that the people who will protect those places are the people who have seen them. Horn has worked with WWF, the Princess Charlene Foundation, and the Mike Horn Explorer Programme to fund youth exploration and education. His expeditions consistently feed climate and ecosystem data back to national science programmes.

The Vessels

S/Y Pangaea — 35-metre, steel hull, lifting keel, ice-strengthened, designed for solo and small-crew exploration in both polar regions. Pangaea has visited Antarctica, Greenland, Svalbard, the Northwest Passage, the Russian Arctic, and most of the warm-water expedition destinations the WV 110 will be sold against.

Why this voice on Wind Voyage

Pangaea is the small-scale prototype of what Wind Voyage offers at 110 metres. Horn's whole career is the proof that the way you reach the wild places is by building a boat that can actually get there. Wind Voyage is that idea, made charter-grade.