Peter Tangvald

Peter Tangvald (born Per Tangvald, 27 September 1924, died 22 June 1991) was a Norwegian sailor and adventurer. Known as an early bluewater cruising pioneer and for his 1966 book Sea Gypsy, he became notorious after two of his seven wives died while sailing with him. The first, Lydia Balta, was shot by boarding pirates in the Sulu Sea on February 20, 1979. The second, Ann Ho Sau Chew, was lost overboard during a transatlantic passage on January 26, 1985. Peter himself was killed, along with his daughter Carmen, when his engineless 50-foot yacht, L'Artemis de Pytheas, was wrecked in Bonaire in June 1991. His son Thomas survived the wreck, but presumably suffered a similar fate when he disappeared at sea off the coast of Brazil aboard his own 34-foot yacht, Oasis, years later, in 2014. In 2024, Peter's daughter Virginia Tangvald, who was just five years old when her father died, released Ghosts of the Sea (Les Enfants du large), a multimedia book and documentary film project about coming to terms with the loss of her father and brother. The book was published in September, while the film, a Canadian-French coproduction, premiered at the 2024 Festival du nouveau cinéma in October. Peter Tangvald learned how to sail in Norway at age 14 and first took up bluewater ocean sailing in 1957, after emigrating from Norway to the United States. Aboard his first bluewater boat, a 45-foot teak yawl named Windflower that he purchased in England, he raced solo against another singlehanded sailor, Edward Allcard, from the Canary Islands to Antigua in November and December 1957. This technically was the first singlehanded transatlantic sailing race in history (Tangvald won by two days), though the 1960 OSTAR (won by Sir Francis Chichester) is more commonly cited as such. Tangvald sailed Windflower...