“Across the Atlantic we had to fight. In the beginning, we had an automatic steering system, but after a week or so, it stopped, so we had to use the wheel of the truck and we could be on the wheel only two hours at a time because it was so tiring. We had to work very hard to keep ourselves alive,” recalls Fons Oerlemans of his hardest Atlantic crossing in his vessel, Floating Truck.
As the name suggests, the ‘boat’ was an 8-tonne Dodge truck with a 120hp engine on a raft. With his wife, Kee Arens, Fons took 58 days to cross from New York to Lisbon.
As he’s fond of saying, “Mission impossible doesn’t exist”. The Belgian sailor has completed five Atlantic crossings, all in unconventional craft: raft, truck, steam boiler and a giant bottle.
“I was born an adventurer and still am. I’m 85 now, most people stop at 70, but I’m still thinking about what I am going to do in the future.” It seems nothing can stop this octogenarian.
A wartime upbringing
World War II dominated Fons’s youth and has influenced his life. He grew up
