Andres Svendlund

Anders Svedlund achieved international fame in the early 1970s for two marathon solo rows across thousands of miles of open ocean. He died on Friday night after a fall in his kitchen In 1971 he rowed a 21-foot boat 4400 miles across the Indian Ocean from Western Australia to Madagascar, and in 1974 he rowed 6000 miles from Chile to Western Samoa. Mr Svedlund, who was 51, was born in Sweden, but was a naturalised New Zealander at the time of his exploits. He came to New Zealand in 1958. His body was found in a Newton (Auckland) house on Friday and the police at first thought he might have been shot. But a post mortem examination established that he died after he struck his head on the side of a table following a fall.
In 1969 Mr Svedlund made an unsuccessful attempt to row across the Tasman from New Zealand to Australia. Four days after leaving Onehunga his boat capsized west of the Manukau Heads. In the Indian Ocean row he was at sea for nearly three months. He took with him four pairs of oars, 50 gallons of drinking water, a desalination plant, food and fishing gear. Mr Svedlund's row from Chile to Western Samoa took almost a year. He left Valparaiso in September 1973, and during the voyage he was held up several times by bad weather. On one occasion he was forced to put ashore on the South American coast because of poor health.