When asked what the best thing about sailing was, she once replied with a typical and apt bon mot from the blue water scene: "The Drink on the Other Side of the Ocean". It was a saying that suited her: fun-loving, direct, humorous. And you can't help but wonder whether she will have a good time now, on the other side of life.
As her husband, Bobby Schenk, wrote to friends and companions at the weekend, Karla Schenk embarked on "her last, the great voyage" on 15 February.
She died at the age of 85 in a nursing home near Starnberg after a "long battle against an insidious illness". The consequences of dementia had isolated and immobilised her for some time - she, of all people, who was a bundle of energy in her younger years: German youth champion and multiple Bavarian state champion in table tennis, a petite woman, but a woman who was always hands-on, winning and attentive to other people.
This is also how she found sailing: sporty, pragmatic, undaunted. She sailed around the world twice with her husband - from 1970 and 1979. Their third long-distance trip took them in a catamaran from France to Malaysia. Like the Kochs and the Erdmanns, the Schenks are among the German blue water pioneers. Karla is still regarded as the first German cruising sailor to round Cape Horn.
In terms of nautical miles, she even has an Atlantic passage ahead of Bobby Schenk. After the pair sailed across the pond in the 1990s without a compass or other navigational aids, she was the only one to sail the return passage. She told Thomas Dobernigg, a journalist and friend who accompanied her on the second leg:
"Do you know what the best thing about this trip is? That I overtook the great Bobby. Now I have more nautical miles than him. And he'll never have the chance to catch up again, because we only ever do everything together - except this trip."
While her husband had made a name for himself with reports in YACHT and many highly successful books, Karla had always remained in the background. When he spoke on stage in large halls in front of hundreds of visitors, it was she who stood at the projector and threw the medium-format slides onto the wall. A supporting role that later sometimes caused her problems, as her delight at the extra miles she had logged made her realise.
This is probably one of the reasons why the woman, whose sailing merits are no less impressive than those of her lifelong co-skipper, later insisted on reflecting on their shared experiences in her own book. It is called "Karla Schenk" and bears the charming subtitle: "Adventurer, circumnavigator, Cape Horniere, pilot, crazy chicken!"
Alexandra Schöler-Haring has recorded the memories, including thoughts about old age and sayings that helped Karla Schenk, née Schulz, pass many a test. Including this one: "If you're afraid of everything, you'll spend your life behind the stove."
No, she was certainly not afraid. Her life took her from Pomerania, where she grew up, to Bavaria, where her parents fled in 1945. And then around the world. "Now the sea is my home," she once said.
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Jochen Rieker
Herausgeber YACHT
