Belgian plans crossingin a bottle

Press, 27 April 1989, Page 15

Belgian plans crossing—in a bottle

By

ROSEMARY LAURENT,

of Reuters, in Amsterdam

Fons Oerlemans has crossed the Atlantic on a raft, in a steamboiler, and in a truck. This northern summer, he plans to make the voyage in a giant green beer bottle. The 50-year-old Belgian engineer has spent the last three years designing and building a 12metre long, bottle-shaped hydrofoil which has a cruising speed of 40 knots. In June, he will sail his steel bottle the 3000 miles from New York to England in a bid to set two world records — the first Atlantic crossing and the longest distance travelled by a hydrofoil.

He also wants to make the fastest Atlantic crossing by completing the journey in 80 hours, beating a record set in 1986 by a British millionaire entrepreneur, Richard Branson. Branson’s powerboat made the trip in 80 hours, 31 minutes. “But the most important thing for me is not the speed but being unconventional,” Oerlemans says after the official launch of his winged bottle in Amsterdam’s eastern docklands. Christened Spirit of Heineken after the Dutch brewer sponsoring the expedition, the 10-ton vessel resembles the familiar green beer bottles sold worldwide, complete with a brand label and metal top. Oerlemans originally planned to make his voyage three years ago but was delayed by financial problems. “We’ve already done tests across the harbour using a scale model and it works splendidly,” he says. “Before all my expeditions, about 80 per cent of people are pessimistic, so I have to believe in myself.” Oerlemans’ fascination with the Atlantic began at the age of 14 when he told his father he wanted to cross the ocean on a raft. Twenty years later, he achieved his ambition. Two more trips followed, each time on a

different home-made raft. The challenge lay less in crossing the ocean than in devising a more eccentric vessel for each expedition. In 1981, he travelled with his wife from the Belgian port of Antwerp to the Caribbean Island of Barbados in a semi-submerged sailing boat made from an ordinary steam-boiler. “It was like a submarine. We had underwater windows so we saw amazing things,” he says. “But it took six months, which is probably one of the slowest crossings ever.” The next object to capture his imagination was a truck: “A truck won’t float so I had to attach special cylinders to make it seaworthy.” As Oerlemans and his wife set off from New York on their 52day journey to Lisbon, they were almost arrested by the baffled Coast Guard, which thought it had picked up a Soviet submarine on radar. It was in the middle of the Atlantic that Oerlemans decided on a bottle for his next design. “We often saw bottles floating on the sea.” Most hydrofoils are suited only to the calm water of rivers and lakes, but Oerlemans’ invention has two special wings at the front and back, enabling it to cut through waves. The vessel will carry all its own fuel. The Belgian and his two-man crew will spend the crossing cramped inside their bottle, navigating in turns. With visibility restricted to a small bubble-like window in the hull, their greatest danger will be from floating' objects such as icebergs, discarded containers and an unsuspecting whale. To avoid collisions, Oerlemans has installed radar and an early warning sonar system to detect ships and objects over long distances.