In June, 1979, Gerry Spiess of White Bear Lake climbed aboard his garage-made 10 foot sailboat, Yankee Girl, in Virginia Beach, VA for what would become a 54-day journey across the Atlantic Ocean. 54 days of loneliness, beef jerky and books. That loneliness ended when Spiess landed in Falmouth, England. 10,000 people were waiting for him including his wife and parents.
Spiess died on earlier in June after a long battle with Parkinson's disease at 79 at his home in Pine County. Following his crossing of the Atlantic, he did a solo-crossing of the Pacific in 1981. All in that same, small sailboat he tested on White Bear Lake before sailing the two largest oceans on the planet.
"It is very lonely of course, but the lonliness is not a problem by itself. The problem is it exacerbates other problems. So, I try to guard against falling into depression", Spiess told WCCO Radio after that journey in 1979. "There are tricks you can use. Humans can do lots of things to trick themselves, it's really amazing what we can do. Even as far as your health goes. You can trick yourself into thinking your ill. You can trick yourself into thinking your well."
Most people thought Spiess was crazy for trying to cross the Atlantic in his tiny boat. It had four sails, some navigational equipment and a radio, a tiny 4-horse moter and only 60 gallons of fuel.
There were of course challenges along the way. Writing in National Enquirer, Spiess worried that he would be swamped by a pod of whales before they swam away. He also was washed overboard once during a storm. He wrote "One moment I stood on the deck of my boat, and the next I'm catapulted into the sea. This seemed the moment when God finally deserted me - the laslt act in a terrifying series of mishaps which had dogged me from the moment I had set out."
Spiess wrote a book, "Alone Against the Atlantic" following that voyage.
