‘Professional adventurer’ John Fairfax dies at 74

John Fairfax, who died Feb. 8 at 74 near Las Vegas, once called himself a “professional adventurer.” A former big-game hunter and cigarette smuggler, he achieved international celebrity in 1969 for being the first person in recorded history to row alone across the Atlantic Ocean.

Two years later, Mr. Fairfax made a transpacific crossing in a rowboat with his girlfriend — the first such triumph by a two-person crew. He wrote books about his voyages, the culmination of a lifetime of wanderlust.

Mr. Fairfax, who was raised mostly in Argentina, said he first left home at 13 to “live like Tarzan” in the South American jungle. He accumulated exploits as others might professional accolades or club memberships. He was variously a shark fighter, ocelot hunter, mink farm operator and authority on baccarat.

He was best remembered for his accomplishments as an oarsman. The fascination with rowing began in childhood after he read a Reader’s Digest article about two Norwegian adventurers who in 1896 became the first in known history to row successfully across the Atlantic Ocean.

Bronzed, sinewy and charismatic, Mr. Fairfax persuaded the noted English boat designer Uffa Fox to build him a vessel fit to weather the Atlantic. If it capsized, the 22-foot-long, orange-colored Britannia would right itself within seconds.

For two years, Mr. Fairfax prepared in London’s Thames River. He embarked Jan. 20, 1969, from Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, bound for Miami. Currents threw him down to the West African coast before he could make his way to Florida.

One hundred eighty days later, he landed in Hollywood Beach, north of Miami, after a voyage of more than 5,300 miles. He battled sharks, exhaustion, diarrhea, backaches and blisters.

At times, he pulled alongside freighters that supplied him with fresh water and food, but the trip was marked by extreme loneliness. A Russian sailor named Svetlana, he told the New York Times, perked up his spirits with a kiss.

Loneliness was less a factor on his next voyage, planned from San Francisco to the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. He brought along his girlfriend, Sylvia Cook, a London art gallery secretary who might have seemed underqualified because of her inability to swim.

On April 26, 1971, they boarded a 30-foot, Fox-designed vessel christened Britannia II. Over the next 361 days, they were blown down to Mexico by a storm and survived a cyclone by strapping themselves in leather harnesses. There were shark attacks, and Mr. Fairfax suffered a gash in his upper right arm from a shark bite. “It was not really the shark’s fault — it was mine,” he told a reporter. “I had speared a fish, and the shark took it off my spear. So I speared him and he did not like it, so he had a go at me.”

He and Cook said they enjoyed each other’s company and would part as friends. Reporters eager for the “Adam and Eve” angle — two comely people, alone at sea for nearly a year — were disappointed. As Cook told The Washington Post after the journey, the bed was soaking wet all the time. “You try it in a crummy little boat like Britannia at sea,” she said.