Category: Miscellaneous

The hull is now almost completely covered with H 100 4 cm thick Divinycell. Due to the small radius and compund curvature I have had to cut it upp in small quadrangels and build like I was a bricklayer.

To be continued…

During the Stockholm boatshow I handed out about 11000 of leaflets. That was 4 every minute. I also gave 4 lectures.

Some people did not like the text, but many did. It is impossible to please everyone. Besides it was not my intention to please anyone but to explain my motivation. Below is an translation:

YRVIND TEN
I have committed myself to sail around the world non-stop in a ten foot boat. The route will be East-about, South of the big capes. I will spend one year at sea on the world’s stormiest waters. 400 kilos of food and 100 kilos of books will feed my body and soul. I call my project Yrvind Ten.
People say it is impossible. Who cares? It is not the first time people have discouraged me. Despite sceptics I built an ocean going sailboat in my mother’s basement. Despite them I invented my own sextant no bigger than a fingernail.
Unlike other sailors I am not in a hurry. I do not want to reach the next port as soon as possible. On the contrary, I am looking forward to spending a year at sea. I consider that this attitude makes my chances of success extremely high, at least 50 %. But it will not be easy. That is the point. For me there is absolutely nothing worth doing as much as solving problems.
To solve problems, to invent and create, consists of combining elements of construction in new ways. Even a few elements give many possibilities. For example, you can place six people around a dinner table in no less than 720 different ways. With one meal a day it will take two years before a seating plan gets repeated. For a group of twenty-four people the number of combinations increases to six times ten to the power of twenty-three.
This is remarkable, because even if you made a thousand rearrangements every second you would have to continue a thousand times longer than our universe has existed before repeating an identical seating plan. This illustrates life’s complexity because few real problems contain fewer than twenty-four elements.
Happily one realizes that this complexity guarantees that the number of possible solutions is never exhausted.
Unfortunately, most people are blinded by hidden rules, regulations and conventions. They do not see the original solutions. To do that, it is necessary to leave the beaten track and climb to higher realms on steps made from fundamental principles. Only up there will your vision be clear. Furthermore, faith moves mountains. One must never give up.
My project’s level of ridicule is on the same level as climbing high mountains or playing golf. Chichester and Rose sailed around the world, for which they were knighted. Knox-Jonston, Blyth and James sailed around the world non-stop and were also knighted.
Sailing’s last, big, ridiculous challenge is to sail around the world in a ten-foot boat. When I first read about the challenge and saw the, boats, I said to myself ”I can do that better, and I can build boats that are more seaworthy”. There are not many branches of sport where a 73 year-old man can set a world record.
And what alternatives do I have, with my wretched monthly pension of 500 €? Do I, like my fellow pensioners, buy a TV and a remote control with big buttons, surf the channels and become bored?
If I did that I would lose my form, I would become fat and slow-witted, maybe get diabetes and have a stroke- then they would put me in a long-stay hospital and connect me to a system of life-supporting machines. Chained to my bed, longing for the free horizons, I would suffer hell. I would spend my last decades trying to persuade someone to help me commit suicide.
No, TV is not for me. I must have something to live for, a problem to solve.
Most people misunderstand life. Comfort does not make you happy. On the contrary, comfort is dangerous to your health. It makes you lazy, fat and bored.  It is only by using energy that you create more energy, and it is that surplus of energy that makes you happy and healthy. Happiness cannot be bought for money.
During my planned voyage I will become absorbed in studying small boat behavior in big waves. Likewise, I will make an inner voyage, a voyage to higher spiritual realms, where I will not be alone: 100 kilos of well selected non-fiction books, written by the world’s greatest thinkers, will guide me.
It is not only for my own pleasure that I have committed myself to make this voyage. I am sure that it will in several ways contribute to make this world a better place.
I expect that it will make people realize the fact that a small boat, properly designed, is safer than a bigger one. Bigger boats create bigger and more dangerous forces. They also demand complicated technology. Complicated technology in the marine environment is vulnerable. Only in a small functional boat do you have absolute control. Only in a small boat are you safe in the ruthless fury of storms.
What is worse and what concerns everyone is that big boats create big emissions that pollute the air and water and that  waste Mother Earth’s limited not renewable resources. That is not only wrong but also unjust. Necessarily, growth has now after three hundred years reached its end. We have already passed ‘peak oil’. They say the market will produce an alternative when oil becomes too expensive. I regret to inform you that that’s wishful thinking. Oil is not produced, it is a finite natural resource that is extracted. There are no economical alternatives because oil is concentrated energy and to concentrate energy is terribly expensive.
For other resources like phosphorous there are not even  alternatives at any price.  Liebig’s law of the minimum proves that lack of one nutrition cannot be compensated for by an excess of others. The example can be multiplied.
Dwindling resources cannot sustain unlimited growth, that’s a fundamental principle.
We must prepare ourselves to live in austerity. My ten foot boat will give me new knowledge. With it I hope to contribute to the small-scale technology that must be developed if we want to survive more generations as civilized human beings.
Do not get angry. Do not kill the messenger. I do this for all our best.

With respect and sincerity, Deep Water Captain Yrvind.

For more information see yrvind.com & youtube

Uppl 1. Copyright Yrvind 2012.

The pictures below shows Erik Wärn at Marströms helping me to cut patterns för the hull in the 20 meter long plotter. Click once and twice on the pictures to enlarge them.

Erik sorting the panels out.

Erik adjusting the plastic sheet.

The machine does the cutting

The deck panel is removed and saved.

To be continued…

Thursday 29 March I met Yachting Journalist Jean-Luc Gourmelen from Voiles est Voiliers at the nearby airport Linköping. Voiles est Voiliers is France biggest yachting magazine. On Sunday 31 March he flew back to Paris. During his long stay here I made my best to show and tell him as much as possible about my past and my planned new project.

It is an honour to have been chosen for an intervjuv in Voiles est Voiliers and I am shure that it will be good for my project “Yrvind Ten”. Hopefully the article will appear in the June issue.

Below is a picture taken of us in Göran Marströms office. Me is to the right. Greatings and thanks to Jean Luc.

Now work on the boat and the 1/8 modell continues.

Here is a curve of rightning arms. This curve is remarkable for its range. The stability for Yrvind Ten is positiv for all angles of heel. Modern production boats have only positiv values for angels up to 120 – 130 degres. The reason, they have small height beam ratios and they have large cockpits that do not privide boyancy when the boat is up-side-down.

As my boat is going to spend a year in the worlds stormiest waters it will be upside down many a times. I like to make my boats behavior in waves as comfortable as possible. I belive a deep fin keel with a heavy bulb is going to create bad movements. I belive boyancy in a deck house is a much better way of making a seakindly boat. I am also convinced that I do not like to be in a big boat when it capsizes. The Fastnet race and the Sidney – Hobart race gives exampels of what can happen to big boats in heavy weather.

Annie Edson Taylor was a teacher. On 24 October 1901 on her 63 birthday she went over the Niagara Falls in a barrel she had designed herself.

Now if a small boat like that built of oak and iron hoops could survive the Niagara Falls more than a hundred years ago I am convinced that a modern composite boat can survive anything. Now imagin what would happen if you pushed a modern production boat over the Niagara Falls. Me for one would not like to be in it. And still, people think small boats are unsafe.

To be continued… regards Yrvind

Yrvinds next project Yrvind Ten is interesting in many ways. Not at least, it is a huge challenge for anyone. Does the person who will perform the project, also aged 73 years, will the whole project get an added dimension. Now, Yrvind is not just anyone. He has sailed small boats in all conditions for about 50 years. To say he is experienced is an understatement.

Yrvind is for many reasons an interesting person, worth portraying. This has been done before at some time in the 90’s in a documentary broadcast on Swedish television. Now is the time to do it again. A film crew, Sveriges Talare, will follow him in this project and work has already begun. Film work will be able to follow on YouTube. Small video clips will be posted each as they become available. Here You can see one of them.

Media was interested of Yrvinds new project, Yrvind Ten and also his present boat Yrvind.com. That kept Yrvind busy giving interviews from early morning to late evening. Se more about his new project further down the page.

Yrvind interviews for TV 4

Yrvind on stage being interviewed

Yrvind during TV recording

Yrvind shows his old boat Yrvind.com at the boat show in Stockholm, but will announce its new project Yrvind Ten.

The beams on wich I put the moulds. The have to be level in all directions and equally spaced.

Here the foreward moulds are upp. The spacing is 60 cm. There are extra half moulds at the ends at 30 cm spacing. I now realise that the curvature has so small radius that I have to insert even more moulds at the ends at 15 cm spacing.

But first two weeks at the Stockholm boatshow, leaving wendsday morning. Come and have alook.

Regards Yrvind.

The full scale moulds are now done, all eight of them.

Marking the lines on the particle board prior to cutting them  with the jigsaw.

The four aft ones to the left, the four foreward ones to the right. For a ten foot boat I made her as big as I judge is consistent whith seaworthiness. I plan to spend one year non-stop in her.

Besides that I prepare myself and the previus boat for the Stockholm boatshow which opens next week.

There is plenty of snow here, the boat is at the moment inaccessible but milder weather and rain is announced. I hope for the best, that the snow will mealt away.

At the boat show I will show the previus boat give lectures and anser questions about the coming trip around in ten. I will sell my books and give out leaflests motivating the commitment, welcome.

Regards Yrvind