A 43-year-old British man just sailed 34,175 miles around the planet, which sounds impressive enough on its own, until you find out he already cycled around it and flew around it in a tiny helicopter. James Ketchell has now done something no human being in the history of the species has ever done: gone around the entire Earth by land, sea, and air.
What He Actually Did, Because It Bears Spelling Out
According to Only Good News Daily, Ketchell completed a 34,175-mile sailing voyage aboard his 40-foot yacht, Mindset, docking back in England to finish what is genuinely one of the most absurd athletic and logistical accomplishments in recorded human history. This was his third circumnavigation of Earth. His third.
The first was in 2013, when he cycled 18,000 miles across the globe. The second was in 2019, when he flew a gyrocopter 27,600 miles around the world and picked up a Guinness World Record in the process. And in between all of that, he climbed Everest and rowed across the Atlantic. You know. Just to stay busy.
On arrival, Ketchell told reporters, "I'm not sure what challenge is left on this planet." Which is either the most zen thing a human being has ever said, or the most quietly terrifying.
The Hat Trick Nobody Else Even Tried
Here is the thing about being the first person to circumnavigate the globe by air, sea, and land: nobody else had apparently even attempted the full set. Ketchell noted as much himself, with characteristic British understatement, telling Only Good News Daily, "I guess it's just luck that I am the first person to do that."
Luck. He called it luck. The man cycled across every time zone on Earth on what is presumably a bicycle without complaining about it, flew a gyrocopter across oceans, and just finished a solo sailing trip the length of which most people cannot even conceptualize, and his takeaway is that he got lucky.
For context on just how long those individual achievements took, Only Good News Daily points out that the first person to ever cycle around the world was Thomas Stevens, an English-American adventurer who completed the journey between April 1884 and December 1886, on a penny-farthing. Ketchell did it in a fraction of the time with presumably better gear and the same apparent nonchalance.
The Legends He Is Standing Next To
The historical company Ketchell keeps here is genuinely elite. The first person to sail solo around the world was Joshua Slocum of Nova Scotia, who set off in 1892 and finished in 1895, taking what Only Good News Daily describes as a "leisurely" approach to rewriting human history. The first person to fly solo around the world was American aviator Wiley Post, who did it in July 1933.
Ketchell's gyrocopter record, specifically, was its own category. Nobody had flown one of those particular aircraft around the world before him, which adds an extra layer of specificity to the achievement. He is not just checking boxes someone else drew. He drew some of the boxes himself.
There is a version of this story where a person hears about Joshua Slocum or Wiley Post and feels inspired. Ketchell appears to have heard about all of them and thought, right, what if I did all of it.
"It Hasn't Really Sunk In Yet"
Ketchell's quotes throughout are doing a lot of heavy lifting in the understatement department. "It hasn't really sunk in yet to be honest," he said after completing a journey that most people, staring at a globe, cannot even trace in their heads without losing track. "If someone else had been the first person to go round the world by air, sea and land then I would be the first person to shake their hand."
That is a man who genuinely does not seem to think he is special, which is either an incredibly healthy psychological trait or a sign that he has spent so much time alone at sea that his frame of reference for what is normal has drifted considerably.
He is 43. He has now circumnavigated the planet three times using three different modes of transport. He has stood on the summit of Everest. He has rowed across the Atlantic. Whatever he does next, it had better be something with an adequate press operation, because this story deserves a much bigger audience than it is currently getting.
The Dingo Take
We spend a lot of time at this publication documenting the ways human beings are managing to make the world smaller, meaner, and dumber in real time. It is genuinely good, then, to be reminded that there are people out there doing the opposite, literally expanding what a single human life can contain. James Ketchell sailed around the entire planet. He already cycled around it. He already flew around it in a gyrocopter. He is the only person in history to have done all three. That is a fact. Write it down.
The news cycle will eat this story alive. It will get three minutes of morning show airtime wedged between whatever congressional hearing is melting down that week, and then it will disappear. That is a crime. This man did something that has never been done before in the tens of thousands of years that human beings have been walking around on this planet. He deserves at least the same coverage we give to a politician who mispronounced something on a hot mic.
Ketchell said he is not sure what challenge is left on this planet. We have a suggestion: give a speech to every sitting government on Earth about what it actually looks like to commit to something difficult and see it through. Start with Washington. They need it most.
