Sven Yrvind - 81 year old sailor

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Campitor
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Joined: Thu Aug 20, 2015 11:49 am

Sven Yrvind - 81 year old sailor

Post by Campitor »

I came across this sailor's blog of a man who is 81 years old. His name is Sven Yrvind. He was born in 1939 and has been sailing the ocean for most of his life; he's still sailing the ocean's today. He is also a boat builder/designer.

His blog: https://www.yrvind.com/exlex/
His boating manifesto: https://www.yrvind.com/wp-content/uploa ... ex_eng.pdf

Some quotes from his manifesto are pasted below. It seems like many of his ideas regarding sailing echo many concepts in ERE.
Many people misunderstand life. They think comfort is happiness, but unfortunately, that kind of happiness only works in the short term because, like drug abuse and instalment purchases, it burns energy intended for your future well-being. Those who enjoy effortless comfort are constantly deprived of energy. They lose strength, become lazier and fatter, have less good health and are more easily bored.
A prerequisite for saving the world is for you to give up your comfort.
In its ruthless wrath, the sea is cruel, but bureaucrats are now the biggest danger to ocean sailors, as they force manufacturers to build boats according to regulations rather than ocean requirements.
The intrinsic ability of small objects to cope with great stresses is due to the fact that a number of factors favorably interact.
The idea of race rules is that all sailors must have the same chance,regardless of the boat.The rules are meant to prevent a less skilled sailor from reaching the top of the podium because he has spent a lot of money on a faster boat. Therefore, the rules punish the boats' ability to sail fast, meaning that all boats with the same handicap must reach the goal equally slowly. But, the reality is too complicated and boat designers keep finding loopholes in the rules. Despite all the rules it’s still not quite fair, but the end result is badly designed boats.

sky
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Re: Sven Yrvind - 81 year old sailor

Post by sky »

I have been following Sven for a long time, including following his latest track from Norway to the Madieras islands. I like a lot of what he says, however you need to take it with a grain of salt. Some if it seems to be marketing to get sponsors/patrons for his boatbuilding projects.

I was very disappointed that his most recent design failed in two ways: it was not able to sail upwind well, and it was very slow. He also said he had water ingress, perhaps through a bilge pump, and he had condensation dripping into the cabin at the hatch. He did make the passage safely, so credit to his piloting skills. His previous design also had some problems. I think he is trying to go too extreme in some ways, with critical failures. He might be able to fix his Exlex design with a different sailplan and a few daggerboard slots and/or leeboards along the side of the hull. That and reload the heavy storage (mostly water and food) to trim the boat fore and aft.

I like the concept of his design. It certainly is possible to design a boat to meet his criteria. In fact, a number of traditional boat hull types could be modified to make this type of boat, such as a faering or whaleboat.

jacob
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Re: Sven Yrvind - 81 year old sailor

Post by jacob »

When I looked into yacht design back in my racing days, there was a lot of commentary on how boats were designed for the consumer market and/or idiosyncratic racing rules rather than sea-worthiness. For example, wide-beamed yachts that were optimized more towards having a party in the marina and never leaving the dock beyond motorsailing just outside the harbor on a nice day ... or racing rules that lead to path-dependent craziness.

I suppose the same dynamics exist in any kind of vehicle. It's certainly the case for cycling as well with bikes being limited in geometry according to bike racing whereas breaking those rules would create faster bikes.

Insofar one wants an actual race handicapping limits are practically required. I've partaken in one one-design (a competition everybody has exactly the same type boat) regatta and while we handled ourselves well during the start sometimes being one of the first over the line, we usually finished towards the bottom since our sail suite was bought used from the richer racers who plonked down $10,000 for fresh Kevlar sails every season. It's very hard to beat an innate 0.2kt advantage over the course of an hour or two. Conversely, the skipper of another boat always complained about the handicap rating of his boat---apparently handicaps are calculated using some method that doesn't favor all sailing conditions easily. Thus while usually being quite fast, the boat would typically place near the bottom after adjusting.

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