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Legendary Canadian ocean racer Mike Birch, who won the first edition of the Route du Rhum race by just 98 seconds, passed his final finish line at the age of 90. He was found on October 26 after dying peacefully in his sleep at his home in Brittany, north-west France.
The famous solo transatlantic race owes a huge debt of gratitude to Birch who at the age of 47, started it all when in 1978 when his yellow Walter Greene designed 12m trimaran won the race by 98 seconds ahead of Michel Malinovsky’s bigger, more powerful monohull.
Before offshore racing, Mike Birch learned his trade as a sailor which was far from being his first vocation. Born in Vancouver, he was in turn a miner, an oil worker, a cowboy, before taking another look at the horizon…
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