Baltic Sea crossed by windsurfer

A 41-year-old Lithuanian windsurfer sailed his board 200 kilometers across the Baltic Sea to Sweden hoping to be the first to make such a crossing.

Arunas Rinkevicius, a businessman, windsurfed from Sventoji, Lithuania, to the Swedish island of Gotland in 10 hours and 25 minutes. He was met by the Swedish coast guard near the southern tip of the island on Thursday evening.

"He looked OK," said Ulf Lenholm, a coast guard official. The windsurfer was wearing a GPS satellite positioning device on his arm for navigation, and was escorted by a support team on a motor boat, Lenholm said.

Rinkevicius said he did not know of anyone who had windsurfed across the Baltic before him. He said he hit a top speed of 45 kilometers per hour (28 mph) during the crossing.

He wanted to windsurf back to Lithuania on Friday, but bad weather forced him to take a boat instead.

"You cannot defeat the sea - it is just too big. You can only adjust to it," he was quoted by the AP as saying.