Thies Matzen took this photo while becalmed with his wife Kicki Ericson on Wanderer III in the trade wind belt between southern Chile and the Tuamotus. He says “I call it the whale picture because it looks a little bit like the boat is disappearing behind a wave which has the shape of a whale.”
(more…)A small boat keeps the world big and I have always tried to keep the world as big as it possibly can be.
That’s my aim, not a big boat with which you circle the world as quickly as you can.
Thies Matzen / Wanderer III
My dear friend Thies Matzen and his wife Kicki Ericson have sailed 150,000 miles aboard Wanderer III — their 30-foot wooden sloop — much of it through the Southern Ocean. They overwintered at South Georgia Island for two years and sailed to Antarctica on the smallest traditionally planked wooden boat to ever make that voyage.
Click on the player to listen to Thies’ story.
Also on Travel Grit: Sven Yrvind was beaten by his teachers, built a boat in his mother’s basement and sailed into legend. Hear his story.
Transcript