Postby bnjtokyo » Wed Feb 23, 2022 7:15 pm
I think you are right and the intended meaning is "circumvent." How it became "circumnavigate" is impossible to determine at this point: it could have been the author, the editor or the proofreader who put it in. On 1976 when William Tillman circumnavigated Spitsbergen in his cutter Baroque, he ended up more or less where in started out. Whereas if, in his voyage to Patagonia, he had circumvented the Straights of Magellan, he would have gone around Cape Horn instead.