Erling Tambs

Erling Tambs (born May 25, 1888 in Larvik , Norway , † 1967 ) was a Norwegian writer and sailor.

Life

Erling Tambs was born the sixth child of the lawyer Victor Emanuel Tambs and his wife Henriette. As a child he lost a father and a brother: they drowned while sailing. Tambs was hired on a square sail when he was 15 . After eight years of long travel (to Australia), he tried his hand at work as a secretary, journalist, novelist and importer in Oslo . Since nothing really worked, he came up with the plan in 1928 to sail away with his wife Julie on their own keel, the Teddy . They had to sneak out of the harbor secretly - the authorities did not want to allow them to sail due to the lack of equipment on their ship. Less than a year after the start, son Tony was born in the Canary Islands , six weeks later they started to cross the Atlantic. They reached the South Seas via Trinidad and Panama . Coconut Islands , Marquesas, and Society Islands lay along the way; 1931, daughter Tui is born in New Zealand . In 1932, after leaving Auckland , Teddy drifted onto the rocks on the reefs of the Challenger Islands . Tambs cut Tony loose, who was tied to the railing, and jumped the child onto a ledge. Julie was washed overboard and struggled ashore in disgust. Tambs also saved Tui, the surf smashed the ship.

When the Cruising Club of America announced an Atlantic regatta in 1935, Tambs wanted to represent his home country. He bought the Sandefjord , a Colin Archer Rift, and sailed to Newport with friends . In the storm, a huge wave hit the ship and it capsized. A man drowned, and under emergency they reached their destination.

In 1937 Erling Tambs wanted to sail again in the Pacific . To top up the travel budget, he had to charter the ship to ornithologists who explored the island of Tristan da Cunha . Tambs himself never set foot in the country, sailed in circles for months or waited for orders. Sick of scurvy and with a ship in a desperate condition, Tambs reached Cape Town , where he had to sell the ship for lack of money. He died in 1967.

In Germany Erling Tambs' books Honeymoon but how! In a pilot cutter through two oceans , islands of the blessed and cruises of horror . They're all about his rides. They are honestly written, gripping reports.

ship

The Sandefjord was a Norwegian Spitzgatter , a former coastguard work boat. It is a gaffelgetakelte ketch that Colin Archer has drawn. It was built in Risör in 1913 and had a length of approx. 14.36 m, a width of 4.94 m, and one with a draft of 2.44 m. She carried 82.6 m² of sail, the engine was removed by Tambs.

On the pitch polling (overhead pass) of Sandefjord take today textbooks reference when it comes to the features of fuselages and tail shapes of sailing yachts. The Colin-Archer cracks are not entirely undisputed among sailors: “Poor upwind characteristics”, “too slow”, “lack of buoyancy at the stern” are the arguments on the one hand, while the other praises their 'beauty' Ability to be able to lay in the box safely in any weather ”and the“ good self-steering properties ”. Colin-Archer- Doppelender is a type of yacht that has been built almost unchanged for more than 100 years, probably the only one of its kind.

The Sandefjord sailed around the world in 21 months in 1965 and has been on the northern coasts again since then.

Works

• Hard Seilas (German "cruises of horror" 1979, ISBN 3-922117-05-8 )
• Seilasen med Teddy (German "Honeymoon - but how! In a pilot cutter through two oceans" 1947)
• Islands of the Blessed Leipzig 1944.

Web links

• "Sandefjord" today ( Memento from October 29, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
• Tall ships

Sandefjords webpage

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from February 17, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.