A LONE VOYAGE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 87, 9 October 1937, Page 24

A LONE VOYAGE

ACROSS ATLANTIC

Captain Ludwig Schlimbach, who re- j ired from the Hamburg-America Line six years ago« after making fast trips across the Atlantic Ocean as master of ;he liner Hamburg, sailed slowly into New York' Harbour on August 18 in lis thirty-three toot yawl,. Stoertebeker, n which he crossed the ocean alone n fifty-seven days. The sail boat looked spick and span in its white paint, with a forty-foot uain mast and fifteen-foot jigger mast, and not a scratch'as a reminder of ten lays' tossing in rough seas while crossing the Gulf Stream. . That was the only rough weather Captain: Schlimbach encountered on a journey that took him from Hamburg around : the European Continent to Lisbon, Portugal, out to the Azores, md then across the wide expanse ox >cean to New York, he told an Ameri:an interviewer. The trip for Captain Schlimbach was i return to.his .first love of the sea and i test to prove that at . the age of 60 tie could still handle a sail as well as n the days of his youth, before he became a master of steamships. The captain looked hale and hearty -more like 45 than 60—as he stretched ais legs in blue sailor pants on the lock, andysaid • that >siailing • a boat was lot as much of'a rest as he had expected! Since his retirement to a home by the shore at Newport, he has sailec ships with a crew in races across the r) C ean and to Bermuda, but this was his first sail alone since he was a boj sailing on the North Sea off Germany When he left Hamburg on June i: tie took with him many of the book: ae had always wanted to read and-i bale of newspapers, but with twe mainsails 1 and ■ a jib to watch there was no time for reading. Sometimes during a day's calm he played cribbage with himself while sitting at the tiller waiting fOr a flutter of wind. On days when there was a good fol-lowing-wind he set a balloon jib, which gave him, a best day's run 0f420 miles. On other days he made as little as ten miles. Then he had-time to cook himself a good canned meal; over an oil M stove, check and-recheck his position iwith ■ instruments, and catch iup oij sleep* in cat-naps of three to four hours at a nod during-the; day. - . • He did dare to sleep at night for t fear that, lonely as: he .seemed on a s huge ocean, he might run smack into some other lone sailor. - The captain figured the total distance . of his sail at.about 5000 miles. The u course by steamship routes is about j 3000 miles. The extra 2000 miles ineluded the side trips to Lisbon and j the Azores; where he stopped off for a few days, and long tacks to get around head winds. As he .reached the .Gulf Stream he tacked r against strong head winds for two weeks, and on some days reefed down his sails all day during storms. ' The former steamship master scorns ■ the'use of engines in pleasure boats. , "When they put engines in yachts," ( he said, "I really want to, quit the sea." , t