Journey has been grueling, but sailor's dream lives on.

Byline: Lori Nickel

This isn't another billionaire trying another solo flight around the world in a hot-air balloon or a rock star willing to punch his ticket on the Sputnik.

This is Tim Kent, a 50-year-old college textbook sales manager from Elm Grove, Wis., who coaches his daughter's soccer team and cuts his own lawn . . . and the Tommy Hilfiger pillow on which he rests his head was borrowed from a friendly adversary, skipper Brad van Liew aboard the Tommy Hilfiger Freedom America.

In the world's richest sport _ world-class sailboat racing _ Kent has no major sponsor, no full-time land crew, no job waiting for him back here and, at the moment of a recently e-mail from the Southern Ocean between Tasmania and New Zealand, no wind.

"I will return home to Milwaukee rich with memorable experiences but completely depleted financially," wrote Kent, on the third leg of a five-leg race, in an e-mail from his computer to the Journal Sentinel. "Not a fun thing to consider when in the middle of nowhere."

No, Kent never did find that sponsor when he …