Tristan Jones; Author, Adventurer, Philanthropist

Tristan Jones, 71, a British author and adventurer who wrote 17 marine adventure books, two novels and numerous short stories. He also taught disabled youngsters to sail even after losing a leg in a 1983 traffic accident and the other leg to gangrene a year ago. A fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Institute of Navigation, Jones held many records for solo long-distance sailing, logging 400,000 miles in travels that took him to the world’s highest body of water, Lake Titicaca in the Andes, and to the lowest, the Dead Sea. Jones embarked on a career delivering yachts around the world. His sometimes harrowing, sometimes humorous accounts of his exploits include “The Incredible Voyage” (1977), “Ice!” (1978)--a tale of a North Sea crossing that left him and his one-eyed, three-legged dog marooned in ice for 366 days and “A Steady Trade” (1982), an autobiography. For his last major sailing adventure, he enlisted the help of three disabled Thai youngsters to build and pilot a boat across the Kra Isthmus, a feat never before accomplished. In Phuket, Thailand, on Wednesday of complications from a stroke.