For much of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the name most close­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with sail­ing around the world is La Bor­de.

Harold La Bor­de, his wife Mary Kwailan and their son Pierre be­came the first Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens to cir­cum­nav­i­gate the globe, com­plet­ing the voy­age be­tween 1969 and 1973 aboard Hum­ming Bird II.

Their achieve­ment be­came part of the coun­try’s mar­itime his­to­ry, with Harold and Kwailan lat­er re­ceiv­ing the Trin­i­ty Cross.

Harold La Bor­de would go on to com­plete a sec­ond cir­cum­nav­i­ga­tion be­tween 1984 and 1986 aboard Hum­ming Bird III, this time sail­ing via Cape Horn.

But be­tween those two La Bor­de cir­cum­nav­i­ga­tions, an­oth­er Trinida­di­an qui­et­ly set out to do some­thing re­mark­ably sim­i­lar.

His name was Michael Hope-Ross.

A dif­fer­ent Tri­ni cir­cum­nav­i­ga­tor

On Jan­u­ary 7, 1982, the then 25-year-old Hope-Ross sailed out of Trinidad aboard An­gel, a 30-foot Piv­er-de­signed tri­maran, be­gin­ning a jour­ney that would take him around the world and keep him away from home for more than four years.

There was no large ex­pe­di­tion be­hind him, no mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tem and no guar­an­tee of what lay ahead.

There was sim­ply a young Trinida­di­an, his boat and a de­ter­mi­na­tion to see what ex­ist­ed be­yond the hori­zon.

“I want­ed to see and ex­pe­ri­ence the world,” Hope-Ross said to for­mer Trinidad Guardian jour­nal­ist, Valenti­no Singh in April 1986.

And when peo­ple ques­tioned why he would un­der­take such an enor­mous jour­ney, his an­swer was straight­for­ward.

“When peo­ple ask me why I did it I say to them, why shouldn’t I do it.”

Set­ting sail from Trinidad

Hope-Ross be­gan his jour­ney through the Caribbean, sail­ing through the Grenadines be­fore con­tin­u­ing to St Mar­tin and even­tu­al­ly mak­ing his way to­wards the Pana­ma Canal.

From there, An­gel en­tered the Pa­cif­ic, with Hope-Ross sail­ing to the Gala­pa­gos Is­lands be­fore con­tin­u­ing to­wards Aus­tralia and the is­lands of South­east Asia.

The voy­age took him through In­done­sia, Sin­ga­pore, Malaysia and Tai­wan be­fore he crossed the In­di­an Ocean and con­tin­ued to­wards Sri Lan­ka and south­ern Africa.

Even­tu­al­ly, his route car­ried him across the South At­lantic and to­wards Brazil, bring­ing the long jour­ney back to­wards the Caribbean and, ul­ti­mate­ly, Trinidad.

The map may make the voy­age ap­pear straight­for­ward. Life aboard a 30-foot tri­maran was any­thing but.

Dan­gers of the open sea

Hope-Ross en­coun­tered se­vere weath­er, equip­ment prob­lems and the con­stant chal­lenge of keep­ing a small ves­sel mov­ing across some of the world’s largest stretch­es of ocean.

One of the most se­ri­ous mo­ments came dur­ing a gale near Mada­gas­car, when he was forced to de­ploy a sea an­chor to keep An­gel un­der con­trol.

Near Aus­tralia, the tri­maran al­so en­coun­tered a reef, re­sult­ing in dam­age to the cen­tre hull.

Each in­ci­dent car­ried the po­ten­tial to turn an am­bi­tious voy­age in­to a fight for sur­vival.

There were al­so the less dra­mat­ic but equal­ly per­sis­tent chal­lenges of keep­ing the boat main­tained, find­ing sup­plies and deal­ing with the fi­nan­cial re­al­i­ties of spend­ing years at sea.

Work­ing his way around the world

The jour­ney was not fi­nanced by some lim­it­less per­son­al for­tune.

At dif­fer­ent points, Hope-Ross worked as a boat skip­per, in­clud­ing in Samoa and Sin­ga­pore, earn­ing mon­ey to con­tin­ue his voy­age.

That meant the cir­cum­nav­i­ga­tion was not sim­ply a mat­ter of sail­ing from one ex­ot­ic des­ti­na­tion to an­oth­er.

There were pe­ri­ods when the jour­ney had to be in­ter­rupt­ed so that he could work and re­plen­ish his re­sources.

Along the way, he al­so formed friend­ships and re­la­tion­ships with peo­ple from dif­fer­ent coun­tries. Jen­ny, a woman from New Zealand, ac­com­pa­nied him for part of the jour­ney.

But much of the voy­age was spent alone.

Four years of soli­tude and dis­cov­ery

For Hope-Ross, sail­ing brought free­dom, but there was al­so soli­tude.

Days could pass with noth­ing but ocean sur­round­ing An­gel. Nights brought an even greater sense of iso­la­tion, but al­so mo­ments of ex­tra­or­di­nary peace.

Hope-Ross spoke of the peace­ful­ness of be­ing at sea at night, when there was lit­tle to see ex­cept the stars and the wa­ter around him.

The ex­pe­ri­ence al­so gave him an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ob­serve peo­ple and so­ci­eties far re­moved from Trinidad.

In South Africa, he trav­elled through ar­eas as­so­ci­at­ed with Zu­lu cul­ture and en­coun­tered peo­ple whose lives were very dif­fer­ent from those he had known at home. He al­so picked up hitch-hik­ers dur­ing his trav­els, an­oth­er re­minder of the un­ex­pect­ed hu­man en­coun­ters that be­came part of the jour­ney.

He en­coun­tered pi­rates too, al­though his ex­pe­ri­ence was not the Hol­ly­wood ver­sion of ma­raud­ing gangs storm­ing his boat. The ves­sels in­volved were gen­er­al­ly much larg­er, and the dan­ger was some­thing to be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly rather than sen­sa­tion­alised.

What stood out to him, how­ev­er, was not sim­ply the dan­ger but the di­ver­si­ty of the world he had en­tered.

Through Africa and back to the Caribbean

As An­gel con­tin­ued west­ward, Hope-Ross ac­cu­mu­lat­ed ex­pe­ri­ences that few Trinida­di­ans could claim.

He saw dif­fer­ent cul­tures, nav­i­gat­ed un­fa­mil­iar wa­ters, dealt with me­chan­i­cal and fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties and spent years re­ly­ing large­ly on him­self.

Yet dis­tance al­so sharp­ened his ap­pre­ci­a­tion of home.

One of the things that struck him dur­ing his trav­els was Trinidad and To­ba­go’s racial and cul­tur­al mix.

Away from the coun­try, the abil­i­ty of peo­ple of dif­fer­ent back­grounds to live along­side each oth­er was some­thing he came to view from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive.

Af­ter more than four years away, An­gel even­tu­al­ly head­ed back to­wards Trinidad.

Home again, but the itch re­mained

When Hope-Ross fi­nal­ly re­turned in 1986, he had been away for four years and al­most three months.

The young man who had left Trinidad in Jan­u­ary 1982 had re­turned with a world of ex­pe­ri­ences that could not eas­i­ly be con­tained in a sin­gle sto­ry.

His voy­age had al­so added an­oth­er chap­ter to the coun­try’s rel­a­tive­ly small but re­mark­able his­to­ry of cir­cum­nav­i­ga­tion.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Yacht­ing As­so­ci­a­tion iden­ti­fies Hope-Ross as the coun­try’s third Trinida­di­an cap­tain to sail around the world, fol­low­ing Harold La Bor­de and Dr Michael Camps. Camps com­plet­ed his own two-year cir­cum­nav­i­ga­tion in 1984.

Oth­er Trinida­di­ans have since fol­lowed the same path. Trinida­di­an Mar­sha Je­re­mi­ah-Pet­ters­son, for ex­am­ple, lat­er com­plet­ed a nine-year cir­cum­nav­i­ga­tion with her Swedish hus­band.

But Hope-Ross’s sto­ry re­mains dis­tinc­tive be­cause of the pe­ri­od in which he sailed and the mod­est scale of his ex­pe­di­tion.

There was no guar­an­tee of com­fort and no cer­tain­ty of what await­ed him at the next port. He left Trinidad with a 30-foot tri­maran and a de­sire to see the world, and even­tu­al­ly re­turned hav­ing done ex­act­ly that.

And even af­ter four years at sea, the jour­ney did not en­tire­ly cure his de­sire to ex­plore.

Hope-Ross ad­mit­ted that he still had what he de­scribed as “itchy feet”.

For Hope-Ross, the world had been the des­ti­na­tion.

But Trinidad was still home.

Hope-Ross’ ad­ven­tur­ous na­ture led to his death on De­cem­ber 15, 1988 at the age of 31 as he lost his foot­ing while at­tempt­ing to take pho­tographs while hang­ing over the edge of the Grand Canyon in Ari­zona, USA.