Sweden to Trinidad via multiple disasters: 'Is there an idiot as big as me on this Earth?'

Swedish pensioner makes landfall after epic voyage in rickety homemade yacht

Paul Lewis
Tuesday December 5, 2006
The Guardian

The adventure would not be out of place in an anthology of ancient tales of foolhardy mariners. A pensioner who set sail for the Caribbean in a homemade boat because he liked pictures of the tropical islands has reached his destination after overcoming violent storms, shipwrecks, burglary, severe damage to his vessel and eight months marooned in Norfolk.

Yesterday, Erik Ramgren, a 66-year-old papermill worker from Sweden, was lounging on the deck of his 11.5-metre (38ft) catamaran in a pair of yellow trunks in Chaguaramas bay, a marina in Trinidad surrounded by thick forests.

"I was going crazy with loneliness," Mr Ramgren said, as he recalled some of his misadventures over the last 14 months. "I was actually hearing voices from the hull in the boat and I started speaking to myself for hours and hours. There was no one around. I would just talk and talk to myself."

Mr Ramgren began his sea voyage despite limited sailing experience and an ill-equipped catamaran which, by his own admission, was only half-built.

Following the death of his wife in 1992 and only child in 1997 he had nothing left but his yacht, he said, and was keen to live in a warmer climate.

But as he departed Stockholm with his boat stacked with strips of plywood, paint and cans of beer, it was clear that his would be an amateur voyage.

His yacht, Turbolaans Absolut, had no flares, no emergency radio and - crucially - no echo sounder. After just 12 days at sea he hit a sandbank off the coast of Norfolk.

The Guardian found Mr Ramgren moored opposite an Asda car park on a grey industrial stretch of the river Yare in Great Yarmouth.

His introduction to England had been coarse: no one had offered him a shower or a hot meal, teenagers has taken to throwing stones at his boat and the dockyard owner fined him £50 for wasting staff time.

"I'd like to leave Yarmouth now," he said. "This is a very peculiar place. Everyone eats so many fried potatoes. And the coffee is so expensive. It is no place for a poor Swedish pensioner."

John Cannell, a crewman from Caister lifeboat, rallied to his support, providing the sailor with a winter mooring and a new radio - the Carphone Warehouse also paid for repairs to his hull after reading of Mr Ramgren's plight.

But despite the assistance, Mr Ramgren resumed his trip in mid-July in a boat that was still without keels. He admitted he was taking "a big chance" by venturing out in a broken and unstable yacht. About an hour later, Erik Ramgren disappeared into a clear blue horizon.

He reappeared three months later, near Trinidad. "I was caught out with no power 13 miles off the coast," he said. "The current was taking me to Mexico." He used the radio supplied by his Norfolk friend to call for help.

He finally entered Chaguaramas bay as he had departed Yarmouth - towed by a rescue boat.

In a letter to Mr Cannell, Mr Ramgren recounted his adventure. His engine had failed hours after he left Norfolk in the summer, and he was forced to drift with the tide through a treacherous strip of the English channel criss-crossed with shipping lanes.

"Finally a north-west wind came and I could leave for the Bay of Biscay," he wrote. "First evening out there: me in the kitchen cooking dinner, perfect weather, boat sailing on its own balance [and] suddenly a bang in the front of the other hull! I rush upstairs just [in time] to see a coconut-looking thing disappearing out the back. The boat turns. It's not possible to steer."

He arrived in the Canary island of Gomera a month later after enduring six severe gales which ripped his sails to pieces. "Small harbour. No space for me. Lying at the ferry-jetty [authorities] tell me to go away. Give me three hours to refill my food supply. I start draining the supermarkets of all their cans of fish and bags of rice. Two and half days later I leave Santiago de la Gomera with a fine hanging over my head.

"Out at sea I find out that somebody has stolen my binoculars, the briefcase with my few papers and €400 [£600]."

Mr Ramgren said he had been advised to sail to a nearby island where he could fix his boat cheaply and install keels.

"Impossible without keels in a strong north-east wind. [Instead] my choice gets to be the Caribbean, although the time is the worst possible, with September coming - the hurricane season."

He was rescued off the coast of Trinidad on October 13 "after so many hazards that there is no space for them in this letter".

Desperately saving food and water, but unable to leave the helm of his catamaran because his automatic steering had failed, he lost 15kg. "I had to be at the wheel almost all the way from England to Trinidad," he said. "I wonder if there is one more idiot as big as me on this Earth!"

But the mariner's journeying days may not be over yet. Basking in the Caribbean sun while eating a breakfast of tinned Swedish fish eggs left over from his supplies, he added: "It takes two to three weeks to get something done in Trinidad where it will take me one day to have it done in Sweden. It took me weeks to find a mechanic to fix the motors and he never meets his appointments. That would never happen in Sweden."

He is, however, trying to make up for lost companionship.

"I'm enjoying the nightlife here," he said. "Every time I go out to parties I don't come home until the next morning. I'm looking for a woman to spend time with - there's room on the boat for a female friend."