With the current Vendee Globe fleet circling the bottom of the planet at record speeds, you will note that there are no Stars & Stripes flying from any of the boats.

Ronnie Simpson--Singlehanded Transpac veteran and Iraq War veteran--hopes to fix that problem in the 2016 Vendee, announcing his plan to make it to the start line and become the youngest American to finish the world's toughest sailboat race. [Regular readers will remember we've dropped in on Ronnie before]

He's got a few mountains to climb (like he has no sponsor and no boat), but he is a  determined and resourceful guy so he might just pull it off. 

Here's what he he's thinking:

If you are a sailing Walter Mitty, then you should be following the wanderings and doings of one Ronnie Simpson.

Simpson is still in his twenties, but he has lived quite a life. A short, but far from complete, summary: he served in Iraq as a Marine and was badly wounded, he abandoned his first sailboat in the Pacific, he bicycled across Asia, he raced the Singledhanded Transpac to Hawaii, he lost the keel on the boat on the way back and managed to sail it 800 miles back to San Francisco, he won his class in the SInglehanded Transpac, and now he is aiming for the Vendee Globe. Also, he lives aboard boats that he buys off Craigslist.

This is his latest, and he is about to spend a few weeks sailing it from Washington, down the PNW coast, to San Francisco.

Phew. In short, he travels a highly unconventional path that incorporates a degree of freedom few of us can