When Johannes Erdmann crossed the Atlantic from east to west in 2005, he was the youngest active single-handed blue water sailor in Germany. How does a young man come to buy a boat on eBay and sail it across the "big pond"?
Stefan Raab, a sailor himself, will be exploring this question in his "TV Total" show on 26 March. His guest's life story provides plenty of material for flippant questions:
Due to a lactose intolerance, Erdmann is invalided out of the German army and unexpectedly gains a one-year window of opportunity before the serious side of life begins in the form of shipbuilding studies. So what could be more obvious than to clear the family-owned Fellowship 27 "Maverick" and go on a long voyage? Erdmann seizes his chance.
He experiences a journey through all the highs and lows of single-handed sailing, with storms and lulls, with toothache, euphoria and seasickness, with torn sails and various types of damage.
During his nine-month sailing trip, Johannes Erdmann fortunately found the time to film with his camera time and again. This resulted in enough raw material for an impressive, professionally produced DVD documentary of his single-handed voyage. This and his book "Alone across the Atlantic" have been published by Delius Klasing Verlag.
