Sailor Tapio Lehtinen has returned home from Indonesia.
A shipwrecked round-the-world sailor Tapio Lehtinen has returned to Finland.
Lehtinen arrived home from Indonesia, where he disembarked a week ago after a dramatic rescue operation. His boat had sunk in the Indian Ocean.
The 64-year-old sailor met media representatives at a press conference in Helsinki on Tuesday.
He started the occasion Lauri Viidan with a beautiful poem from the poetry collection Betonimyläri.
– I’m such a little poet boy, Lehtinen began.
– Let the wind come like the wind, keep a boat in the water, under the wave if not in front of it, so that I don’t get lost in memories, he said.
He thanked the journalists for arriving despite the wind and the sleet – just as he himself defied the conditions while traveling at sea.
– Finns have a tendency to clear even in difficult circumstances, he said.
Trouble in the life raft
Lehtinen’s boat sank on November 18 in the Indian Ocean while he was competing in the world’s most challenging sailing competition, the Golden Globe Race. The competition started in September.
The Finn had to wait for help on his life raft for about a day. A fellow competitor was the first to arrive Kirsten Neuschäferwho picked up Lehtinen for a ride.
Lehtinen tells on the Yachting Monthly website, that he tried to announce his location to Neuschäfer, who was looking for him, by shooting an emergency flare into the sky. However, it went horribly wrong.
– Embarrassingly, it was the first torch I’ve fired in my life. It also went accordingly, Lehtinen says.
– I tried to aim the flare straight up, but for some reason it launched at a 45 degree angle into the wind, curved downward and plunged into the wave before the flare’s parachute even opened.
Lehtinen admits that he also made other mistakes when he tried to get Neuschäfer’s attention.
– Holding the hypothermia bag in the air on the paddle was not a very balanced position. How about a telescopic fishing rod with a flag on the end? Or a balloon or a kite? They would have reached even higher, he reflects.
However, Neuschäfer found his rival, and soon after, the cargo ship Darya Gayatri also came to help, on which Lehtinen finally sailed ashore.
The ship carrying soybeans was on its way to China, but the sailor was already able to stay at a stopover in Indonesia. There he was received by a Finnish couple of acquaintances Nina and Tom Jacobywho live in the capital, Jakarta.
The Finnish embassy in Indonesia also helped Lehtinen to sort things out when he had to arrive in the country completely unexpectedly.
Tapio Lehtinen outside Cape Town on November 8. Aida Valceanu, McIntyre Adventure / GGR