I had heard about Sorin Drugan, mostly from stories and on Facebook. I haven’t had the chance to meet him in Limanu or Bucharest in recent years. Since 2017 he has decided that after spending the first half of his life on land it is time to spend the second half on the water. Sorin Drugan – alone around the world, on a 1975 sailboat, only 8m long .
Photo: Sorin Drugan; Adrian Drăgan
However, I met him at the beginning of this year, after returning to the country from Papua New Guinea in December 2019, to be with his family and especially with his grandchildren, on the occasion of the holidays. In addition, the weather would not have allowed him to continue his solitary navigation around the world in the coming months.
SetSail’s organization of a workshop dedicated to solo sailing was the perfect time to meet him and find out all the details of this expedition. In parenthesis, it must be said, Sorin, like a true teacher, taught the audience a lesson in solitary navigation with details about the preparation of such an expedition, the emotions and fears that a sailor goes through forced to fight alone with nature, but also his adventures, from solving some boat malfunctions, including the loss of the rudder (the feather of the rudder that floated at one point near him) and up to the first real confrontation with pirates of Papua.
I therefore took the opportunity to conduct an exclusive interview, trying to capture with him the most important moments, but also the essential things to remember when you are going to undertake such a deed.
Why solitary?
He began his presentation with a brief introduction to the extremely brief history of recreational yachting in Romania, an activity that began here since the time of the monarchy, there was even a royal yachting club. The communists, however, considering this activity a “capitalist” one, forbade it, the few attempts, otherwise reckless at the time, had to be passed on to the chapter of survival and not of any performance. Even the famous Radu Tudoran, the author of the novel “All the Canvases Up” never left Romania.
However, there were various sports clubs, especially in Bucharest and Constanta, which also had a yachting section. Sports events were organized on the Herastrau and Siutghiol lakes, but they promoted classes for children, sailing sports being practiced even from the age of eight.
But by the age of 18 the students were pretty much done with yachting because there was no money left to continue it at a higher level, respectively for bigger boats and international competitions. There was only the Balkans here, which was more accessible for children and juniors. However, not being a mainstream sport, Romania did not manage to qualify for the Olympics, with the only exception of 1980, when, due to the boycott of the United States, Russia invited Romania, which had direct access, without qualification.
When you reached the level of riding a big boat, over 10m, there was no more money or more precisely there were no possibilities. On the one hand, you had to be able to justify that money, and on the other hand, you had to be able to actually purchase a boat. It was an impossible mission!
Many started building their boats, but ran into another problem: they couldn’t get a sailing permit to go out to sea with them.
For these reasons, sports and leisure navigation in Romania could not develop for almost 50 years.
After the Revolution, things began to enter an upward trend, but in Sorin Radan’s opinion “in the period 2000-2020, steps were really taken in the direction of solitary navigation. Many sailing sports practitioners appeared in Romania and the charter and racing culture developed, which increased the level of sailors. ”
You realize that his generation was perhaps harder tried than ours, that the years of anger and helplessness sedimented in people an unstoppable desire to “escape”, and some of them followed their dream even with minimal possibilities as was the case with Sorin Drugan. In fact, he himself says it very plastically “but let us break the ice!”
Preparing the expedition
“Do what the priest says, not what the priest does!” Sorin Drugan
Sorin Drugan also adopted a different navigation plan compared to other daredevils. He preferred to achieve his dream, so to speak, in stages. In the first part, which lasted about 3 months, he traveled the distance between Limanu and the Azores, after which he returned home. At the beginning of 2018 it crossed the Atlantic to the Caribbean, and in 2019 it also crossed a good chunk of the Pacific. At the time of the discussion, a state of emergency had not yet been established in Romania as a result of the epidemiological crisis, his plans being to return to the boat left over the winter in Papua in July. In the meantime, his journey will probably have to wait!
Unlike other solitary circumnavigators, Sorin Drugan had a different philosophy of approach. He did not use a large or aluminum boat or any special preparation for this expedition, except for things related to safe navigation such as the route, currents, weather or on-board equipment and a few spare parts.
He even embarked on this adventure aboard his old sailboat Ajax, a Jaguar 75, only 8m, a sailboat built in 1975, on which he performed only minor operations necessary for current navigation rather than for such a crossing. With minimal investments and a lot of personal effort, however, he proved that it is possible to achieve your dream even with few resources.
But he urges the most daring of the sailors to plan such an expedition very carefully, preferably a larger boat, specially prepared that offers enough comfort and possibilities to spend life on board with as few compromises as possible. Although he also says, more jokingly and more seriously, that too much preparation is not good, because you risk not getting to leave! So, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
Sorin had a rudimentary food heating device on the boat and had no refrigerator or any other cooling device. Canned food, garnished meat, cheese, foreheads and vegetables were among his main foods for a very long stretch of the road.
“I tell you what you should do and what boat to have, although I did not meet these standards. But I chose an area more protected from the winds, I didn’t go through the South Pacific, I stayed at the level of the Equator, the tropics, where the weather is even more predictable, with weaker winds, stronger waters. ”
Physical and mental
It is known that in crossings, the most important thing is not to be alone. But on the other hand, most circumnavigators complained about problems with the crew. People, lifelong friends end up breaking up as a result of such attempts.
Being alone, you don’t have this problem, but there are times when you have to rest or you have to do various maintenance operations, or as it happens most of the time, and it happened to Sorin too, the autopilot fails and someone has to keep the rudder or the echea in his case.
Alone, you must always be able to improvise, repair and under no circumstances give up.
In fact, he says, mental health is the most important. It is mandatory to organize your life perfectly every day on the 5sqm you have at your disposal, to find activities that take you out of the routine, such as organizing a celebration on the boat from time to time, when crossing the Eucharist or when you reach another point of the expedition.
Physical health is equally important. You have to know yourself perfectly, know the limits you can resist, know if you suffer from something and in general be in very good physical condition.
Solitary sailing
“We are not very proud of too many solo sailors,” says Sorin. “The problem with the loner is also related to the way of being. As for me, I don’t like to ride the boat alone, but I wanted to try it. I told myself that once in my life I can do this, but it doesn’t mean that from now on I will go around the world for years, alone. I want to go with a crew, to visit places because this is also an aspect.”
“On the one hand, there are people who asked me what I visited, but also locals who urged me to see various objectives when I was still docking for rest. I told them that I was not interested and I was content to go just a little, to see what people there were and then go on. I mean, my goal was to get home. Anyway, in the Caribbean I liked to visit another one. We still ride our bikes, we used to do a few tens of kilometers, but from the Pacific we didn’t do that anymore, especially after the encounter with the pirates. ”
Beyond the “technical” details and his kind of stories, the courage and confidence that this man gives you, that everything is possible when you want to follow a dream are really contagious.
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