Sven Yrvind
Sven Yrvind (born April 22, 1939 in Gothenburg, Sweden as Sven Lundin) is a Swedish sailor, boat builder, and writer. He is famous for sailing alone across oceans in tiny boats of his own design.
Sailing
Yrvind has made several ocean crossings in his tiny boats. In 1980, Yrvind rounded Cape Horn in 'Bris II', a 20'/5.90m boat of his own design, alone and in the middle of winter, a record for smallest boat to round the Cape. This achievement won Yrvind the 1980 Royal Cruising Club medal for seamanship. In the Roaring Forties he allegedly collided with a whale.
Boat Design
Yrvind designs and builds the boats he sails.
- Yrvind built his first boat 'Bris I' in his mothers basement 1971-1972. The boat's size was determined by the size of the basement: length 6.00 metre, width 1.72m, depth 0.40/0.90m.
- 'Bris II' was built 1976-1978 with the dimensions length 5.90 metre, width 2.40m, depth 1.40m.
- A later boat, 'Yrvind', at an ambitious 4.1m, eventually turned out to be too small and too slow to make major ocean passages in cold waters.
- In 2008 Sven started work on the 'Yrvind.com', a 4.8 metre design inspired in part by Matt Layden's "Paradox"[1]. 'Yrvind.com' is built of divinycell, fiberglass, carbon fiber and epoxy. Sven set sail in 'Yrvind.com' for Martinique on August 11th, 2011. He chose the unusual name 'Yrvind.com' in the hope that anyone spotting him on AIS would be curious enough to visit his website, where he encouraged them to report his position - thus being able to keep the world updated on his progress, despite not having any long-range communications equipment on board[2]. Three and a half months after setting out, 'Yrvind.com' made Martinique, on November 26th 2011[3].
- Sven's latest boat, the 'Exlex', was completed in early 2018. It is 5.76 metres long with a 1.04 metre beam[4]. On May 30th 2018, 79 year old Sven set out in her for New Zeeland, which he hoped to reach sometime in March 2019[5]. Unfortunately, he was forced to abandon his attempt in the beginning of June, and sail to Porto Santo due to design flaws that made Exlex too unstable, slow, and hard to handle. Yrvind has announced he will design an improved model and make another attempt.[6]
Books
Yrvind's three books, "With Bris round Cape Horn" (with Anders Öhman 1985), "Bris" (1990) and "The Constructor" (2003), are currently in the process of being translated into English.
Inventions
Yrvind is the inventor of the Bris sextant, a small, angle-measuring instrument used in navigation.
