Sven Yrvind, eccentric Swedish solo sailor and amateur boatbuilder, has abandoned his plans to sail from Dingle to New Zealand in Exlex, a home-built micro lug, pictured above. Having got as far as Madeira, he halted his trip, saying: “There were a lot of problems with the boat.”
His yacht is just 5.76m in length, with a beam of 1.04m and is driven by two 2m2 lug sails. But he found: “It was not stable enough, and too cramped, and the rudder system did not work very well.”
Undeterred, Yrvind has plans to build a new micro yacht, Exlex Minor, with a length of 5.8m, beam of 1.23m and draught of 0.2m. He has calculated that the displacement of the new design, loaded for 60 days at sea will be…