I have been away given talks and it has gone well. In Sandviken I got help from small boat builder Martin Stenberg. He is building a chinerunner of his own design close to Enigma. In Germany Henning Saal is building an other Enigma. Henning is helping me to produce electricity. He is converting an electric bicycle engine to a muscle driven generator. Hopefully I can show more about it after he has done further trails. I am grateful for the generous help giving to me by the small boat community.
I have also been talking in Norrköping, the site of The Swedish Transport Agency. Nice and friendly people but some of the laws they try to enforce are ridicules. One such is the EU:s RCD the recreational craft directive. The RCD forbids Small Ocean going boats. When I exhibited my boat in Stockholm I got a note stating that I was forbidden to sell it or use it. I asked them what they were going to do about that. If you sell it we will destroy the boat, they said.
When I lived on the west coast a farmer having a peaceful breakfast was disturbed by shots being fired. Looking out he saw his cows lying dead on the field. His crime. He had not put a plastic earmark on his cattle. This is contemporary Sweden.
But hidden beyond the bureaucratic rules there is always a small cheap functional solution to problems. Before our good bureaucrats act, I will be beyond the horizon.
Photo abouve me and my boat with paper from the Swedish transport Agency forbidding to use it or sell it.
A child understands that a small boat is more seaworthy than a big one. It is a fact that a small boat designed and built according to the right thinking is safer than a bigger one. Big boats create dangerous forces. Complicated technology is needed to control such forces. The more complicated a boat is the more vulnerable it is, especially in a marine environment. Only in a small, simple, functional, boat does one have absolute control when the sea brings down its ruthless fury.
Photo above small creatures are stronger than big ones an ant can lift more than ten times its own wheight
Photo abouve: Small things are strong: Mary Edson Taylor 1901 at 63 years of age this coragues schoolteacher went down the Niagara falls and survived. Her craft was small and strong, now more than a 100 years later with modern composites we can make even stronger small craft.
Back at work I continue with my mock-ups one after the other, each one an improvement on the previous. It is a creative process similar to writing and when you write you always make a draft and rewrite. Not so in boatbuilding. Why? Well, we got the Recreational Craft Directive with its bureaucratic rules that puts the builder in a corner where he do not have much alternatives.
Photo abouve part of the saloon.
Photo abouve click once or twice to enlarge. One of the many discarded hatches.
To be continued…
Regards Yrvind