For Self

And then there are others, mature adults riveted with their personal need to experience adventures that most people would never dream of submitting to. The allure of arduous tribulations for the thrill of seeing firsthand and living precariously on one's own capabilities is most certainly not for the faint of heart. But because these adventurous trips are undertaken by thoughtful individuals who value their experiences for what they bring to them in quality of life, they are not to be compared with the misadventure of permitting teen-age sailors to set sail on their own.

David Scott Cowper of England, at the age of 68, is a veteran of sea travel, and he seeks no recognition from the public, nor to achieve celebrity status for living his adventures to satisfy his own need. He has no hesitation in embarking on his sixth circumnavigation of the globe which will take him 56,000 kilometres to Greenland, through the Northwest Passage, the Bering Strait, then to Fiji, Australia, the Cape of Good Hope, then the Falklands, South Georgia and Antarctica. Which represents quite the ambitious itinerary.

From there he will head north across the Pacific to negotiate the Northwest Passage from the eastern end, and return to the North Atlantic, involving a double transit of the Northwest Passage. Mr. Cowper is the first person to have sailed solo around the world in both directions. He sets out with the ship Polar Bound, a motorboat which he used on his fifth circumnavigation.

"She is the perfect tool for the job: self-righting and the strongest surface vessel of her size in the world. She can take 65 tons of ice pressure per square yard of hull and her bottom is shaped like that of a tablespoon so that she cannot be caught in the ice's grip. If she is squeezed, she pops up."

He is prepared to accept that he may be icebound for weeks, even months, in the Northwest Passage, at -40Centigrade. "You try to relax, read books, but you don't concentrate that much. You are always thinking to yourself: "Is the rudder going to be all right? With a pure motorboat, when things go wrong you are a dead duck, simple as that."

He is compelled, as a 68-year-old man, to live his live as one fifty years younger. This is his mature and considered choice. And more power to his boat.