Eric Bretscher holds a Masters in Computer Science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Switzerland, and a Diploma in Project Management from the Australian Institute of Management. He has a background in heavy industrial engineering and process control. He taught all aspects of coastal and offshore sailing and navigation at the well-known French sailing school Les Glénans in the early 1990s and later set out alone on board the sloop Yarra for 7 years, covering some 55,000NM between latitudes north of the Arctic Circle to the Antarctic, including many mythical locations such as Iceland, Patagonia, Easter Island, the fog-bound Aleutian Islands, Alaska, Tasmania and many more with a sextant, depth sounder, speed log and a stack of paper documents. He has been involved with marine engineering, projects and the propulsion of commercial crafts since 1997. He designed a number of pleasure crafts and commercial vessels since and personally built the 43' alloy sloop Nordkyn launched in 2010.