Veteran Bermuda sailor Antony Siese has paid tribute to his 'true friend' Dodge Morgan - the first American to sail solo around the globe without stopping - who lost his battle against cancer earlier this week.

The famous mariner died on Tuesday at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. He was 78.

He and Siese, 77, first got in touch through ham radio during Morgan's 1986 voyage when he broke the record for a single-handed non-stop circumnavigation of the world in his boat, American Promise.

After meeting in Bermuda not long after Morgan's record-breaking journey, the pair decided to sail together, completing around 40,000 nautical miles during their 15 trips.

Yesterday Siese, a former Commodore at Sandys Boat Club, described Morgan as a 'complex, interesting character and a man of his word'.

"I first met Dodge when I contacted him via ham radio during his solo sail," said Siese, who spent time with Morgan at his home on Snow Island last spring.

"He promised to meet with us when he visited Bermuda and he did just that.

"It's apt that his boat was called American Promise because Dodge was definitely a man of his word.

"Our friendship developed over years from sailing with him. I visited him last spring up in Snow Island where he had been living. He was a great friend, a true friend and I was shattered to hear the news."

Although Morgan was a private individual, happy in his own company, he always had time for others, said Siese whose grandson, Owen Siese, recently competed at the Youth Olympic Games in Singapore.

"That he was able to sail around the world by himself ... he really didn't need people around him. He built his home on Snow Island and was living there by himself. But he would always be concerned about other people and was a good judge of character. I'd say he was a very complex, but very interesting character."

Morgan turned his small marine radar company into the successful Whistler brand of detectors before sailing around the world in 150 days, one hour and six minutes, beating the previous record holder, British sailor Chay Blyth, who took 292 days to accomplish the same feat in 1971.

Ted Hood, who designed Morgan's boat, said the American Promise was a rugged sailboat with two of everything, including a spare generator and a spare rudder, and was designed for sturdiness, not speed.

"Everyone said there's no way that boat is going to get around the world in record speed, but it did," Hood, a 1974 America's Cup winner, said yesterday from his office in Portsmouth, R.I.

Before inspiring a new generation of sailors, Morgan drew his own sailing inspiration as a boy working at his uncle's boat yard. The Malden, Massachusetts, native later became part of the sailing scene in Marblehead, Massachusetts, where Hood remembered him as both a free spirit and a driven sailor.

By the time Morgan fulfilled his dream of sailing around the world, he had served in the Air Force, gone to Boston University and become a successful businessman.

He made a fortune by building a small company that started in a two-car garage with a handful of employees into what became Controlonics, a radar detector company.

The Massachusetts-based company later changed its name to Whistler, named for the whistling sound made by its earlier marine radar systems, said John Nolan, who went to work for Morgan in 1979 and now serves as project manager for Whistler Group in Bentonville, Ark.

Morgan didn't mind taking risks and maintained an open-door policy. "If you had anything you wanted to say to him, you just walked in his office," Nolan said.

Morgan eventually brought his love of sailing to Maine, where he lived in Cape Elizabeth and then on Snow Island in Harpswell, where he spent his later years.

He also held a journalism degree from Boston University and bought the influential alternative weekly newspaper the Maine Times in 1985. He later sold it. He also owned the Casco Bay Weekly.

All the while, he continued to sail. He regularly coasted to the Caribbean in a 52-foot sailboat, often making the trip solo, Hood said.