06/12/2026
Real freedom, for some people, is a goal worthy of lifelong pursuit. Richard Ford has been chasing it since just after his military service in South Africa, at age 21. “I wanted to backpack through Europe, like all us kids used to dream about doing, and I didn’t have two pennies to rub together,” he says. “I couldn’t fly from Cape Town to Europe and backpack. I even looked at trying to join the Merchant Navy to jump a ship and try to get there. And eventually, there was a boat.”
It was a 45-foot ferrocement Hartley Tahitian ketch that, on a good day, would hit 5 knots. But it needed crew, and it was headed toward the future Ford imagined. It had no refrigeration. No loran. No GPS. The kind of marine toilet where you had to lean your head down toward it and pump. Out on the North Atlantic. In February. “I’ve never been so cold in my life,” Richard says. “But, you know, we got there.”
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