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Tania Aebi (born October 7, 1966) is an American sailor. She completed a solo circumnavigation of the globe in a 26 foot sailboat between the ages of 18 and 21. Despite many challenges, she accomplished her goal and proved to her father that she could complete something.

Aebi recounts the story of her voyage in her book Maiden Voyage. The book is a story of teenage angst, self discovery and adventure. Aebi's story is unusual because she was poorly prepared for her voyage, but prevailed through common sense and determination.

Aebi had practically no sailing or navigation experience when she departed on her journey, on 28 May 1985. Aebi did not have a GPS receiver, since the GPS system was not in operation then. Instead, Aebi had a sextant for celestial navigation and a radio direction finder. She did not sea trial her boat and was plagued by factory defects that could easily have been corrected before departure.

She completed the circumnavigation in Varuna, a Contessa 26. Her arrival back in New York City on November 6, 1987 after a cold November transit across the Atlantic was heralded nationally by the news media.

Tarzoon, the cat who traveled more than half the world around with her survived for more than 20 years and died peacefully in its sleep just before she was to undertake a new voyage with her two teenage sons. She and her sons sailed a newly acquired steel monohull across the Caribbean and South Pacific during 2008. She traded off with the boys' father, her ex-husband Olivier, in Papeete, Tahiti. Olivier and his sons continued their cruising passage from there.

In 2005 Tania Aebi published her second book, I've Been Around.

Tania Aebi writes columns for several sailing and cruising magazines. She lives in Corinth, Vermont.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Tania Aebi", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0