Antonio Felipe GarcÍa MartÍnez (41)
This American, born to Cuban refugees, grew up in Miami and began sailing Optimist dinghies on Biscayne Bay before graduating to ocean cruising. Ultimately, this led him to purchasing and refitting the Westsail 32 traditional production yacht Ayala. In 2016, Antonio, who has duel US/Spanish citizenship, marked out a career in Silicon Valley working as a social media technologist for Facebook and Twitter, but given this up to sail from San Francisco across the Pacific, then continue to Falmouth in 2017 - a near circumnavigation just to get to the start!