My seafaring odyssey lasted 42 years
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Oldřich Karásek was born on January 22, 1933 in Brno as the older of two children to his mother Anděla, nee Mužíková, a Czech woman from Vienna who had Austrian citizenship, and his father Oldřich Karásek. His father ran a painting company in Brno. His parents got divorced in 1944, and his father was arrested and briefly imprisoned by the Gestapo in the same year. After the war his mother was displaced and later she returned to Czechoslovakia. Oldřich Karásek joined the Boy Scouts after 1945. He graduated from a realgymnasium and later from an electrical engineering school. Most of his life he worked as a technical clerk. After the mandatory military service, he dedicated his time to sports, first to top-level mountaineering, later to aviation (he used to fly a hang glider and a glider). In 1968 he became fascinated by yachting. In 1988 he emigrated on a self-built two-masted vessel, which he used to sail to Australia. In 1991 he returned to Czechoslovakia while still devoted to yachting. He summarized his experience in a book called Jak (po)řídit loď (How to get/sail a boat). He went on a five-year journey around the world with doctor Karin Pavlosková, which she later described in her books. In 2007, his yacht collided with a tanker and the crew had to survive for a week sailing on the shipwreck. He had been married three times, and at the time of filming he was living with his last wife Iva in Břestek near Uherské Hradiště.
