One man’s insane quest to cross the Atlantic in a converted ‘skip ship’ has ended triumphantly!
They all said he was mad, but Swedish-born entrepreneur, Moston Leiklee, finally reached US shores on 24th March this year.
The ‘skip ship’, built at Swan Hunters in Wallsend, looks fairly standard in the water, but the engineering involved at the base of the skip, keeping the vessel upright, is quite amazing.
As chief engineer, Don Bayitt explains: “There’s a canny bit of steelwork hidden under the water, like. You'll not see one of them on the skip hire list!”
Mr Leiklee explained how the challenge started as a joke in a pub with a fellow entrepreneur: “We were discussing untried methods of making the crossing, and a mate joked ‘how about skipping?’
I said that if that included crossing in a typical hire skip, I would bet him £1m I could do it. And here I am! He is not returning my calls now, though.”
