Kirk Patterson

Kirk Patterson has lived in Japan for over 30 years, is fluent in Japanese, and has a PhD in international relations. In 2008, after a 25-year corporate career in Tokyo, he returned to his native Canada to pursue his long-delayed dream of becoming an offshore sailor. Always solo, he spent four years learning to sail by cruising the BC/Alaska coast and then sailed to Hawaii in 2012. After working as a Waikiki bartender for a year, he continued on to Japan, where he became the first foreigner to do a full Japan circumnavigation (three years). He then cruised western Japan for another three years and, along the way, met and married a woman in Fukuoka, where he now lives. In 2019, he launched Konpira Consulting to support foreign cruisers in Japan, organize yacht charters/tours and kayak tours, and advise marinas/ports on how to attract and cater to visitors from overseas.

His nominator concluded, ‘His love for the country shines through his two-part article JAPAN, THE NEXT CRUISING FRONTIER which chronicles his own three-year circumnavigation of the country and appeared in both of this year's Flying Fish. He has been our Port Officer for Japan since 2018 and is in the process of writing a cruising guide to the country--believed to be the first in any language’.