Sunday, September 6, 2026
A man once navigated 1,700 miles in a vessel no bigger than a bathtub—what did he use?
Trivia of the Day
In 1928, Franz Romer successfully crossed the Atlantic Ocean alone in a craft measuring just 21 feet—what type of vessel did he use?
- A kayak
- A canoe
- A folding boat
- A coracle
Answer: A folding boat — Romer's craft was a Klepper Aerius folding kayak—a collapsible canvas-and-wood frame boat that could be packed into two bags, weighed 90 pounds, and was designed for German weekend paddlers, not open ocean. He took 58 days to reach the Caribbean from Lisbon, survived two hurricanes, and proved that a boat you could store in a closet could cross 1,700 miles of the Atlantic. He later attempted the Pacific and was never seen again.
The Boat That Came in Two Bags
Franz Romer left Lisbon on June 26, 1928, in a Klepper Aerius II—a German-made folding kayak with a rubberized canvas skin stretched over an ash-and-birch frame. The entire boat could be disassembled and packed into two duffel bags weighing 90 pounds combined. Klepper had designed it for weekend river trips in Bavaria, not blue water. Romer was 31, a German electrical engineer with no formal sailing training, and he had spent six months modifying the kayak with a small mast, a rudder, watertight compartments, and a canvas spray deck. He carried 110 pounds of canned food, a sextant, a compass, and a fishing line. His plan was to sail solo to New York, riding the trade winds and the Canary Current south toward the Caribbean, then north along the American coast. No one had ever attempted an Atlantic crossing in a collapsible boat before, and most maritime experts considered it suicide. The Portuguese harbor officials refused to register his departure as a legitimate voyage—they logged it as
What most people get wrong
Most assume folding boats are modern inflatable rafts. Klepper folding boats date to 1907 and use a rigid wooden frame with a waterproof skin—they were standard military gear in World War II for commandos and U-boat crews, and hundreds crossed rivers and fjords under fire. They remain in production today.
Sources & further reading
Word of the Day
crepuscular adjective · krih-PUS-kyuh-lur
Relating to twilight; active or occurring during the dim hours of dawn or dusk. From the Latin 'crepusculum,' meaning twilight or dusk—the Romans used it to describe the uncertain light when day and night contend for the sky, and it entered English in the 17th century to describe both the light itself and creatures that stir when most animals rest.
“Deer are crepuscular grazers, emerging from the forest edge just as the sun sets and the first stars appear. The crepuscular glow made it impossible to tell whether the figure on the path was a person or a shadow.”
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Joke of the Day
Why did the folding kayak refuse to write a memoir about the 1928 crossing?
It didn't want to be accused of embellishing the story.
This Day in History
1522 — On September 6, 1522, the carrack Victoria limped into Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Spain, completing the first circumnavigation of the globe. Of the five ships and 270 men who had departed three years earlier under Ferdinand Magellan, only one ship and 18 emaciated survivors returned—Magellan himself had been killed in the Philippines in 1521. The Victoria brought back 26 tons of cloves, enough to pay for the entire expedition twice over, and proved that the Earth was far larger than anyone had imagined. The crew had lost a day crossing the Pacific, discovering the international date line the hard way when they arrived in the Cape Verde Islands insisting it was Wednesday and the Portuguese said Thursday.
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