Before reading this text, try to imagine the 1 meter long space. Yes, it is little.
Little more than the space occupied by a chair and far less than his two outstretched arms.
Because with a boat of this size the smallest ever built in the world the English navigator and adventurer Andrew Bedwell intends to do something unusual: cross the Atlantic and set the record for crossing an ocean in the smallest boat in history to break.
Image: Andrew Bedwell/Disclosure
For this, he is preparing to spend about two months in the very cramped space of his microboat, without being able to lie down (his plan is to sleep sitting up, the same position in which he will spend the whole day) or assume one one step even which, if you take it, will fall into the sea.
madness? Masochism? Or just lack of judgment? Sometimes even the Englishman agrees with all of this.
it will not be easy
“I’m under no illusions and I know it won’t be easy. Kind of like spending two months in a dumpster, on a roller coaster on the waves of the sea,” explains the Englishman.
However, Bedwell is fairly confident that he will succeed in his daring endeavor.
“My boat is ultracompact, but safe,” guarantees the Englishman, who is 48 years old, married and the father of one daughter.
Image: Andrew Bedwell/Disclosure
My boat has the main navigation and safety equipment of a sailboat, just in a smaller space. Much less…” he says proudly.
glove box boot
Image: Andrew Bedwell/Disclosure
It was Bedwell himself who built this sort of floating glove box, more akin in size to a toy boat — which he claims can actually sail thanks to a little kiteshaped sail.
Image: Andrew Bedwell/Disclosure
It took three years to build the device, but he says almost everything is ready to put it in the sea and try to beat the record for crossing the Atlantic in the smallest boat ever.
Will try next year
His plan is to do so next May, when he will attempt to cross the 3,500 kilometers of sea that separates the east coast of Canada from his native Cornwall, UK, a distance he aims to complete in around two months at an average speed less than 5 km/h.
“You can’t sail any faster because the size of the sail is limited by the size of the boat itself,” he explains.
Image: Andrew Bedwell/Disclosure
Bedwell will be in his micro boat for the entire trip, just go outside.
Image: Andrew Bedwell/Disclosure
If I were in a rocket I would have more space,” he admits.
And the water and food?
Lack of space to carry enough water and food for the long crossing was Bedwell’s greatest challenge in designing his capsule boat.
He solved the first problem by installing a portable desalinator, equipment that can convert seawater into drinking water, which is relatively easy and a micro solar panel to generate power for navigation devices.
The second obstacle, the lack of space to store food on board, was much more difficult to solve.
no bathroom
The solution was to fill all the inner walls, as well as the keel of the boat (the part of the hull that’s submerged to give stability and balance the force of the wind in the sail) with packets of dried powder food, which he says it will prepare your wife for the long journey.
“It’s not going to be a very tasty feed, I know, but it’s the only one that fits in the hull,” explains Bedwell, who, however, sees another advantage in the limited menu: his organism’s low intestinal activity during the journey, since it’s impossible would be to install a toilet the size of a standard toilet on a boat.
My bathroom will be the sea,” says the Englishman.
“Do something great until you’re 50”
The quest for the title of navigator of the “smallest boat to cross an ocean” that Bedwell dreamed of is part of his life project to “do something really amazing by the age of 50”.
So far he has crossed the Atlantic in a sailboat just over twenty feet long and sailed to the Arctic in a boat not much smaller still actual ocean liners, which come close to what he intends to do now.
Image: Andrew Bedwell/Disclosure
For me it has become more and more important to make long crossings with smaller and smaller boats. And none will be smaller,” he guarantees.
Where did this idea come from?
Image: Andrew Bedwell/Disclosure
Bedwell’s project of crossing an ocean in a sort of floating shoebox stems from a book he read years ago, written by the sport’s current record holder, American Hugo Vihlen, who is now 90 and crossed the Atlantic with a microsailboat just over five feet long.
But Bedwell decided to do something even more impressive and built his boat half a meter shorter than the American’s.
Homage to the “Mad Sailor”
Image: Lorraine McNally/Disclosure
He was also inspired by the daring exploits of another halfbrained Englishman named Tom McNally (not coincidentally referred to by the English as Crazy Sailor or “Mad Sailor”), a staunch opponent of Vihlen’s in the past, from whom Bedwell inherited some of the solutions based on the design of his dwarf boat applied.
As well as trying to become the record holder for this bizarre type of crossbreed, Bedwell also wants to honor McNally, who died of cancer in 2017, by bringing the record back to England.
a mad fight
In the 1980s and 1990s, Hugo Vihlen and Tom McNally had an insane competition to see who could cross the Atlantic in the smallest boat possible.
In their eagerness to defeat their opponent, both began to slice their boats inch by inch with each new attack.
They got to the point where they were mistaken for shipwrecked in the middle of the ocean and were prevented by the Coast Guard from leaving the United States in such small boats click here to read this intense and interesting story.
In the end, the American got better and took the record.
But maybe only because McNally died before making another attempt.
And that’s exactly what Andrew Bedwell wants to change in this story.
But there is not much room on your small boat for euphoria either.