'Age is nothing,' rescued 84-year-old sailor says

VALPARAISO, Chile — An Ohio sailor rescued in the remote South Pacific isn't ruling out another effort to navigate alone around the tip of South America.

After all, he's tried only six times now to achieve the feat, and he's just 84 years old.

"Age means nothing. What is important is that you are alive, so I don't worry about numbers. I worry about life. That, I think, is more important," Thomas Louis Corogin said Monday after the Chilean navy brought him to shore.

Corogin had set sail Dec. 27 from Easter Island on the last and most difficult part of his attempt to sail around Cape Horn, preparing to weather some of the world's most dangerous seas. But then a key piece of rigging snapped.

He did what he could, but the fix wouldn't hold. In a week of sailing, he had ventured 500 miles (800 kilometers) south of Easter Island. Few places on Earth are more remote.

"The backstay broke," Corogin said, describing the key piece of rigging that runs from the top of the mast to the stern, keeping the sails trim.

"I did temporary repairs with rope, but they would only last a short time and the mast would come down, so I could not sail and the tiller was locked in with the wreckage," he said. "I could not steer the boat, and the boat could no longer sail."

Frustrated and physically exhausted, Corogin activated his distress signal. The Chilean navy confirmed it with the U.S. Coast Guard and then contacted the Japanese merchant ship White Kingdom, which headed toward his location. A Chilean search and rescue plane quickly took off, and after refueling on Easter Island, spotted the 32-foot sailboat the next day, 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) from Valparaiso.

"It was a very good sight to see," Corogin recalled, "because all the way from Ecuador to where I was, I had never seen one ship. There was no traffic whatsoever."

Was it frightening, being alone out there in a broken sailboat? Corogin dismissed the question.

"I have no fear. When you sail on the ocean you have to understand your boat, just like the captain has to understand his ship. You do what you have to do."

Rounding Cape Horn had always been the dream of Corogin, a lawyer who runs a small marina in Port Clinton, Ohio, and gives sailing lessons on Lake Erie. It has always been one of sailing's most difficult feats, and he was trying it alone at age 84. His friends have marveled at his determination, and agree that he seems mentally and physically much younger than his years.