Sven Yrvind Wisdoms
Very occasionally Sven leaves my head spinning with his logical revelations.
* On his website, he writes, big production boats are not made big because they are safer, they are made big because they make more money.
* on a podcast he explains how selling small boats in Sweden was crippled by boating industry lead regulations. Apparently a flood of small seagoing craft were being bought from France. The Swedish boating industry outlawed the practice by alleging these smaller boats were "unsafe". Sven knew this because he had a friend on the committee.
* When he was building his first boat in his mothers yard a town planner told him he couldn't do it. Sven protested; " I thought this was a free country". The planner asked Sven, " What if everybody built a boat on their yard?". Sven asked: "What if everybody was a town planner?".
* Sailing Bris through The Doldrums Sven was held in place by lack of wind for 35 days. The interviewer asked his he coped inferring that a normal person would avoid doing it again. Sven happily described how the conditions were warm and he had a French girlfriend with him.
* Discussing how poorly adapted large production boats are in high latitude traverses, Sven cites the poor completion rate of the Goldren Globe retro race. In 2018 there were 5 finishers x18 starters in 2018 (4 dismastings, 5 gear failures) & in 2022, 3 finishers x 16 starters (1 dismasting, 1 sinking, 5 gear failures). Two sailors completed the course after stopovers). Sven argues that small boats are less likely to be dismasted. Many of the GGR gear failures were associated with self steering, Sven uses sail balance & remote steering only. A small boat exerts less stress on its equipment.
* Sven said he submitted a story to Cruising World Magazine about a sailor who died on his boat. They refused to publish it saying " Its too upsetting, we only publish happy sailing stories ".
* A sailor friend submitted sailing photos to the same magazine, the publishers said: " we cannot publish these because the sailors in the photos have no shoes on". They explained that two large manufacturers of sailing footwear had agreed to support the magazine financially if they only published photos of sailors wearing Dockside or X brand shoes.
