Career
He is famous for sailing alone across oceans in tiny boats of his own design. Yrvind has made several ocean crossings in his tiny boats. In 1980, Yrvind rounded Cape Horn in "Bris II", a 20"/5.90m boat of his own design, alone and in the middle of winter, a record for smallest boat to round the Cape.
In the Roaring Forties he allegedly collided with a whale.
Yrvind designs and builds the boats he sails. The boats lack all forms of electronic communications equipment.
The boat"s size was determined by the size of the basement: length 6.00 meter, width 1.72m, depth 0.40/0.90m. "Bris II" was built 1976-1978 with the dimensions length 5.90 meter, width 2.40m, depth 1.40m.
A later boat, "Yrvind", at an ambitious 4.1m, eventually turned out to be too small and too slow to make major ocean passages in cold waters.
Sven"s latest build is "Yrvind 1/2", a 4.8 meter design inspired in part by Matt Layden"s "Paradox". "Yrvind 1/2" is built of divinycell, fiberglass, carbon fiber and epoxy. Sven set sail in "Yrvind 1/2" for Florida on August 11th, 2011.
Yrvind is the inventor of the Bris sextant, a small, angle-measuring instrument used in navigation.
