Bobby Schenk

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Bobby Schenk in Friedrichshafen at Interboot

Bobby Schenk (born March 10, 1939 in Munich , actually Florian Schenk ) is a German sports sailor. The trained lawyer has published numerous sailing books and travel reports and is known to a wide audience through intensive lectures.

Life

1967 acquired a Schenk GfK -Langkieler type Ensign 34 and sailed with his wife Carla (also: Karla) on the trade route around the world. He then worked again as a public prosecutor and later as a judge. His first book Cruising Sailing was published in 1975.

He then set off for the South Seas in the 15-meter steel yacht Thalassa II . He lived in Moorea for three years . In 1983 he sailed from Tahiti with his wife Carla around Cape Horn with only one stop to Marbella in Spain. With this trip he applied for the Schlimbach Prize for the second time after 1974, but in vain .

Schenk is also a private pilot; In 1989 he took a flight in a single-engine airplane across the South Atlantic to Tierra del Fuego . It went back to Europe via Greenland . During his stay in South America he sailed the waters around Cape Horn extensively.

In 1992 he sailed with a crew across the Atlantic to Barbados , using only navigation aids that could be improvised with on-board resources. One of the core theses that he came up with based on the experience of this trip was that it was not possible to navigate using only the stars or constellations. This thesis is not without controversy, since repeatedly successful ocean trips - z. B. under the auspices of the Polynesian Voyaging Society - who claim to have used this navigation method. The French brothers Emmanuel and Maximilien Berque claim to have crossed the North Atlantic in 2003 only with the help of the stars and without instruments, and the American Marvin Creamer claims to have circumnavigated the world from 1982 to 1984 without navigation instruments.

After retiring from civil service as a judge, Schenk and his wife Carla sailed with the yacht Thalassa (a catamaran made of GRP) from France through the South Seas to Southeast Asia. He interrupted this almost ten-year trip again and again for longer stays in Germany, where he lives in Fürstenfeldbruck , for lectures or appearances at the major boat shows. The trip ended in Malaysia with the sale of the yacht. According to his own statements, he is looking for a new (monohull) ship.

He is one of the few German cruising sailors who have been able to successfully exploit their trips and books, not least because of their constant presence in Europe's largest sailing magazine, Yacht . For years he has been holding seminars on blue water sailing at the Hamburg boat fair , the target group of which are prospective circumnavigators.

Schenk's website is one of the most popular German-language offers for sailors. As with most of Schenk's publications, the focus of the reporting is on the technical equipment for cruising sailors.

According to his own statements, his books have been sold around half a million times and some have been translated into up to ten languages. His specialty is navigation .

Bobby Schenk has been using amateur radio on his trips since 1972, his callsign was DK8CL.

Awards

  • 1974: Trans-Ocean-Medal for circumnavigation
  • 1974: Gold medal from the cruiser division of the German Sailing Association for his circumnavigation
  • 1993: Best sailing book of the year for transatlantic into the sun
  • 1995: Decoration of honor from the Bavarian Prime Minister for services to safety on the water
  • 1998: Honorary commodore of the Yacht Club Austria for services to the largest Austrian sailing club
  • 2004: The sailing magazine Yacht takes Schenk in the list of 100 greatest sailors of all time on
  • 2011: Honorary award from the Austrian High Seas Yacht Sports Association for the lifetime achievement of Carla and Bobby Schenk

Works

Non-fiction

  • Cruising sailing (BLV-Verlag Munich, 1976)
  • Astronavigation - without formulas - practical (Delius Klasing, Bielefeld, 1977)
  • Port maneuvers (Delius Klasing, Bielefeld, 1978)
  • Pocket calculators in navigation (Delius Klasing, Bielefeld, 1979)
  • Yacht navigation - from a circle to a GPS (Delius Klasing, Bielefeld, 1981)
  • Blue water sailing (Delius Klasing, Bielefeld, 1984)
  • Navigation - only to arrive (Delius Klasing, Bielefeld, 1990)
  • Navigating with GPS (Pietsch-Verlag, Stuttgart, 1996)
  • Skipper primer (Delius Klasing, Bielefeld, 2008)
  • Anchoring (Delius Klasing, Bielefeld, 2009)

Travel descriptions, experience reports, literature

  • Eighty thousand miles and Cape Horn (Delius Klasing, Bielefeld, 1984)
  • Freedom behind the horizon - the classic circumnavigation (Delius Klasing, Bielefeld, 1985)
  • Sailing in the realm of storms (Delius Klasing, Bielefeld, 1990)
  • Transatlantic into the sun (Delius Klasing, Bielefeld, 1993)
  • South Sea Dreams (Delius Klasing, Bielefeld, 1999)
  • A little bed story for passionate sailors by Ringelnatz, Schenk, Goethe, Heine, Walser and others. a. (Bern-Munich, joke, 1994)
  • Sailing for life - biography of a great sailor by Bobby Schenk / Judith Duller-Mairhofer (Delius Klasing, Bielefeld, 2011)

Videos

  • Adventure Cape Horn (Videosail, Hanstedt, 1983)
  • Around the world with the THALASSA (Videosail, Hanstedt, 1984)
  • South Sea Dreams (Delius Klasing, Bielefeld, 1999)

software

  • Naviprog 2000 (TEXAS INSTRUMENTS, 1988)
  • Bobby Schenk's YACHT-Computer (Delius Klasing, Bielefeld, 1984)
  • Navtools + GPS (Delius Klasing, Bielefeld, 1986)
  • Complete astronavigation (Pietsch-Verlag, Stuttgart, 1994)
  • Astro Classic (Delius Klasing, Bielefeld, 2000)
  • At home on the world's oceans - Bobby Schenk’s blue water journeys (Pietsch-Verlag, Stuttgart, 1998)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bobby Schenk: "Sailing in the Realm of Storms".
personal data
SURNAME Give it, Bobby
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schenk, Florian (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sports sailor
DATE OF BIRTH March 10, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich