I’m calling on the door to the boat M/S Stenfjell at Söder Mälarstrand in Stockholm. Nils-Göran ”Bennich” Bennich-Björkman is received in jeans and a t-shirt as it is New Zealand. With the springy step clatters he up the steep steps to the little wheelhouse. Here he has his home. Outside the window is the city Hall.
This is Bennich everything he needs: a bed, a small desk, a couple bookshelves. He reads very much. Most of the sailing.
Boats have characterized the whole Bennichs life. When he was around six years old, he built his first sailboat.
– the Feeling of a boat is so much more than something that floats. Winds, water resistance, aerodynamics. How forces affect the sail and the hull.
in the south of stockholm with his single mother and an older sister. The father died when Bennich were infants. The mother tore and they moved often. She trained as an x-ray nurse.
Her hands became completely sönderbrända, tells Bennich.
He lived his life on the streets, but also in the woods around the Field. The time as a boy scout and a scout leader also took him out in the woods and the archipelago. Another early interest was modellflyg.
Flygintresset eventually led to Bennich that seventeen year old came in as a pilot in the air force. When he got in trouble with the lungs, he was forced to stop. Then he started with gliding instead.
the School and Bennich never came to an agreement.
” I already wanted to do things my own way and regarded as useless.
He came nevertheless into the College’s design line. He had an aptitude for the subject, but felt ignored by the teacher, even there, ” he says.
Bennich the voluntary activities of Young people in boatbuilding. Through the years, several hundred young people themselves built segeljollar during Bennichs tutorial.
For Bennich, it has been to get young people to grow, to have a better self-confidence and self-esteem.
” They get to learn to cope with themselves and feel that they are doing something for real. In that way I have probably been significant, made their life a little differently.
For me it doesn’t matter if it’s guys or girls. They want to build a boat, they should have to do it.
He still has contact with the young people who were in the early 60’s. Today is also the retirees.
In the beginning it was mostly guys who came. Then came the girls also. For a while the girls were in the majority.
” For me it doesn’t matter if it’s guys or girls. They want to build a boat, they should have to do it. Right now we have a 13-year-old girl who is on a very nice boat.
Each summer, gives young people out sailing together for a few weeks with the boats that they built.
in 1990, he gave a 19-year-long ensamsegling around the earth. It was something he decided already at the age of ten.
The 6.5-metre long sailing boat ”Peter Pan” had he of course designed and built himself.
” the Boat was is probably one of the smallest sailing so far. A small boat has its advantages. It follows the waves up and down in a natural way.
” It was not at all dramatically. Some make it sound so fancy.
” If it was very heavy, I slept maybe six, seven minutes at a time. Otherwise around 20.
It was the experience around the trip that was the most interesting. The largest part of the 19 years he spent in the country. He walked, climbed, and hitchhiked. Often, he was hembjuden to the people.
” I have met so many nice people. The unpleasant, I kept at a distance.
When Bennich, headed out to sea, took his son over the Young people boat building. The business is still in full swing.
” We manufacture everything ourselves here on board – the hull, masts, seizures. The sails sew, we up a flight of stairs.
Which, coincidentally, open the boat show the day after Bennichs 90 birthday. Where will some of the young people’s boats show up.
