![]() ![]() ![]() Ronnie is also a keen supporter of US Patriot Sailing, a not-for-profit charity that works with veterans whose mission statement clearly explains their work. She is therefore slower than these newer boats, and obviously slower than the larger boats that have entered the challenge, but Ronnie still maintains that he hopes to average around the 10-knot mark for the duration of the circumnavigation. Sparrow is an older Open 50 yacht, so was built of fibreglass and has a fixed keel (rather than the later models which were made of carbon fibre and have canting keels). Ronnie plans to complete the work this winter and then undergo sea trials, before he undertakes the qualifying 2,000 NM solo sail in May, crossing from Chesapeake Bay over to Europe, from where he will start the GSC later in the year. He was immediately hooked, sold his house in Texas, bought a boat and took off. Now after being retired from his military service, Ronnie admits his life was falling apart, and he acknowledges that during this period of his life, he made some bad decisions, that is, until one day when he was trawling the internet, he discovered some articles on sailing. Over time most of the wounds healed, though Ronnie tells me that as a result of the injuries to his eyes, he had to have cataract surgery when he was just nineteen years old, and to this day, still suffers from problems with his vision, but otherwise he considers himself fit and well. It transpires that as a result of the horrific injuries he had suffered in the blast (which included losing half of one of his lungs, which was severely damaged in the explosion), he had been put into an induced coma for eighteen days, during which time he had been flown home. Ronnie was blown unconscious and when he came around, he found out that he was, somewhat disorientingly, back in America. On that fateful day, 30th June 2004, he had been on patrol and was manning the rear gun on a Humvee, when the enemy fired a Rocket Propelled Grenade that hit the vehicle that he was in. He explained that as a teenage recruit, he had been a Marine Corps Infantryman posted to Iraq during the war there. Global Solo Challenge - photo © Ronnie Simpson Racing ![]()
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