I met Jimmy Cornell, his wife Gwendoline, daughter Doina and son Ivan in the port of Niafu, Vava'u, Tonga in 1979 when they were cruising their yacht "Aventura" around the Pacific.

They had just dropped anchor in the harbour when no sooner, Ivan, then 7 yrs old, was sailing their dinghy around the harbour. Lovely people.

Jimmy is Romanian and Gwendoline is English. At the time Jimmy was interviewing everybody and surveying every yacht he could as fuel for his next book. He was also recording his adventures on cassette tape weekly and sending them back to Romania where they were broadcast on radio there.

Jimmy is a very smart guy. He very much understands the concept of residual income. That is why he wrote books. You only have to write the book once but every time a new copy is sold, you get a percentage.

He also understands the concept of creating something out of nothing. The story I heard and I believe it, is that he set up a cruising rally through self promotion that became popular for a few years. This of course had fees etc which generated an income. So what is the assert here?? A computer with a database, an advertising program and a telephone system. This is pre internet days.

I heard that he sold the rights to the rally for $3,000,000 which would be equivalent to say $10,000,000 today.

I think Zuckerberg is a tool in comparison.

I read his book 'A Passion for the Sea' which was interesting and describes his early life before he got hooked on sailing as well as the travels he did on Aventura 1, 2 and 3. It was an interesting read but I was surprised at the editing - or complete lack of it. It came across as if they published a draft version. Still worth a read though for anyone interested in sailing and especially traveling on a yacht for longer periods of time.

But his latest yacht, the Aventura4, is one sexy boat!