Legally blind man to try solo around-world sail

Dennis Howard has sailed all over the world, but when an eye disease took away most of his sight a few years ago, he figured his days on the water were over.

Now he plans to sail around the world -- alone.

Howard, 62, has only seven percent of his vision, and is legally blind.

On a recent visit to Howard's boat in San Diego, "Early Show" co-anchor Jeff Glor asked Howard how much he can see.

Howard replied, "The way I like to describe it is that, if you cover your right eye, that one is blind completely, and then if you can imagine looking through a small drinking straw with the left, that's what I see."

Howard told Glor that, about three years ago, he was walking down the street when his right eye suddenly blacked out completely.

"For many, many years, I've known that I've had very high pressures that are related to glaucoma. ... Walking down the street, I was a bloody mess," he said. "I had fallen off of things, run into things, I embarrassed myself."

With his right eye gone, and sight in his left eye getting worse by the day, his time at sea appeared just about done.

Howard said, "It was a moment where I wasn't strong on that 'don't despair' part and I thought, 'Oh, it's too bad I can't sail anymore,' and I just jumped to that conclusion, and it wasn't true. I just had to think about it a little bit more."

Howard kept fighting, but the intense pain from his condition left him with dizzying headaches. His situation was so severe, Howard said, that no doctor was willing to risk surgery.

"After I had been to every center along the West Coast and they couldn't help me, nobody wanted to touch me, because my pressures are so high," he recalled. "And just by a great coincidence, I ran into a surgeon who teaches surgeons how to take care of this condition."

That surgeon was Dr. David Gritz, an associate professor of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences at New York's Montefiore Hospital.

Gritz said of Howard's condition, "It was one of those situations where, if you don't do surgery, he's going to go blind, no doubt about it, in a very short time."

Gritz successfully made an incision pocket to drain the excess fluid in Howard's left eye, relieving the painful pressure caused by glaucoma, saving what limited vision he had left. Nearly five years later, Howard's sight hasn't changed.

Now, Howard is getting ready for his most difficult challenge yet: He wants to sail around the world, solo, on his 20-foot boat, The Avalo. The boat will be Howard's home for two years.

Glor told Howard, "Sailing is not easy when you have 20/20 vision, in a 20-foot boat, around the world. What makes you think you can do it in the condition you're in?"

"I know if I can walk across a busy street out here, that I can sail this boat out here in the ocean," Howard replied.

Some friends have told Howard not to go because it's too dangerous. He says he needs to -- not for himself, but for others.

"My primary hope out of this is that, with the level of my disability, by me doing something like this, even the idea of me deciding to do something like this, I think, could inspire people," he said. "People who have disabilities who give up before they need to, they can get out of the house."

For more information about Howard's trip, visit InsightSailing.com.