Shane Acton

Who was Shane Acton?

Shane Acton was a sailor, known for circumnavigating the globe in an 18-foot boat. He first set sail from Britain at the age of 25, in 1972.

Raised in Cambridge, England without any sailing experience he departed in a used 18' 4" bilge-keel sailing boat for which he paid £400 - not an enormous amount even in the early 1970s. The boat was a 'Caprice', a Robert Tucker design originally named 'Super Shrimp' but referred to by Shane simply as 'Shrimpy'. Later Shane was accompanied for much of the voyage by his girlfriend, a photographer from Switzerland, Iris Derungs, he sailed westabout through the Panama Canal, circling the globe and returning to England as a local celebrity eight years later. The voyage is chronicled in his book Shrimpy: A Record Round-the-World Voyage in an Eighteen Foot Yacht. In 1984 he set off on a second voyage.

He lived his later years near Golfito, Costa Rica, and died of lung cancer on February 25, 2002 at the age of 55 in Cambridge, England.