The boat was left with its keys tied to the railings 
 
 A wealthy man has come forward to claim a luxury boat that has been floating in a Swedish harbour for at least two years, after he apparently forgot all about it. 
 
 The boat's Norwegian owner says he intended to sell the vessel in 2012 - and was under the impression that he had, Expressen GT newspaper reports. The boat, said to be worth as much as $108,000 (£65,000), was moored in the Swedish town of Stromstad, close to Norway's southern border. The keys were tied to the railings for all to see. 
 
 Eventually, police issued a Facebook appeal for any information about its owner. The appeal was picked up by Norwegian media, including national broadcaster NRK, especially after items such as newspapers and a diary on board the US-made Rinker 342 Fiesta Vee suggested there was a Norwegian link. 
 
 Finally on 26 March someone stepped forward, saying he was the owner and had simply forgotten about his boat. "You have to be very wealthy to be able to forget about a boat in this price range," Swedish police inspector Tomas Andersson told the paper. 
 
 The owner now has to collect the boat and also pay harbour dues for the past two years, "a cost he can apparently afford", the newspaper says. 
 
 Use #NewsfromElsewhere to stay up-to-date with our reports via Twitter. ||||| A wealthy Norwegian sailor has finally claimed a luxury boat that has been floating in a Swedish harbour unattended for two years - after he FORGOT all about it. 
 
 Police had issued a Facebook appeal to find the identity of the owner of the boat, which had its keys hanging from a railing on the pier. This being Scandanavia, no one had opted to take it for a joyride. 
 
 The boat, worth $108,000 (£65,000) when in prime condition, was left in Fort Washington harbour in the Swedish town of Stromstad, close to Norway's southern border. 
 
 Norwegian media picked up on the appeal as a newspaper and documents from that country were found in the cabin of the American-made Rinker 342 Fiesta Vee. 
 
 Two days after the March 24 appeal, someone stepped forward. Swedish newspaper Expressen reported that the owner told police he had intended to sell the vessel in 2012 and thought he had done so. 
 
 "You have to be very wealthy to be able to forget about a boat in this price range," it quoted Swedish police inspector Tomas Andersson as saying. 
 
 Two years' worth of harbour dues are now due from the owner - but he won't be too worried about that. 
 
 "[It is] a cost he can apparently afford," reported Expressen. ||||| Story highlights Michael Boatwright has dissociative amnesia 
 
 He doesn't speak English anymore and now speaks only Swedish 
 
 His ex-girlfriend is helping him get his life together in Sweden 
 
 Michael Boatwright got off the flight from Los Angeles to Sweden and tightly embraced an unfamiliar woman as if they were old friends. 
 
 They were. The two had dated briefly in the 1980s. 
 
 But Boatwright doesn't remember any of that. 
 
 The 61-year-old Florida-born U.S. Navy vet woke up in a California hospital earlier this year speaking only Swedish. 
 
 He had lived in Sweden off and on for about 20 years. Now, here he was at Goteborg Landvetter Airport, where that old friend, Ewa Espling, plans to help him get himself together in her country. 
 
 "I just want to be able to live a normal life and hopefully get my memory back," Boatwright said Tuesday. 
 
 Boatwright has been diagnosed with dissociative amnesia, a rare psychiatric condition typically associated with a traumatic event. He says he has no memory of his past. 
 
 Police found him unconscious in a Southern California Motel 6 in February. 
 
 Tuesday, Boatwright recalled that, waking up in the hospital this year, he looked at himself in the mirror and started crying. He didn't recognize the face looking back. 
 
 Ewa Espling and Michael Boatwright, who has dissociative amnesia, reunited on Tuesday in Sweden. 
 
 When doctors tried to talk to him, he thought that his name was Johan Ek and that he was from Sweden. He didn't know why he had five tennis rackets in his hotel room. 
 
 He was treated at Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs. The hospital discharged him to Roy's Desert Resource Center, where he has spent the past two weeks. 
 
 The Riverside County Department of Mental Health bought him a one-way ticket to Gothenburg after Boatwright made it clear that he wants to live in Sweden. 
 
 Boatwright said Tuesday that he is grateful for all of the help he has received. 
 
 In the United States, Boatwright said, he felt like a stranger in his own country because he didn't speak the language: English. 
 
 In Sweden, he feels safe and more calm and believes he'll be able to start rebuilding his life. 
 
 "I think it's the best solution for Michael, because he can't speak English," Espling said. "To recover fully, I think he needs to come where he's safe and understands what's happening around him." 
 
 Before Tuesday, Espling and Boatwright hadn't seen each other since 1984. 
 
 Espling has arranged for a place for Boatwright to live in Sweden. She said she will try to assist as much as she can while he works through rebuilding his life. 
 
 "He's going to have a home as long as he needs it," she said. 
 
 She identified Boatwright in a Swedish newspaper article this year. 
 
 "Michael asked me, 'Why are you doing this for me?' Because I know Michael would have done the same thing for me. If he had found me in the papers. This is a very nice man with a very big heart," Espling said. 
 
 Exes Espling and Boatwright hadn't seen each other since 1984. 
 
 In an exclusive CNN interview this month, Boatwright said he suffers from recurring nightmares too disturbing to describe. 
 
 Boatwright said he is pleased to be in Sweden and wants to start working once he gets his memory back. He hopes to become a tennis instructor because, in his view, it's the one thing he's good at. 
 
 Boatwright compared his life to an empty chalkboard. 
 
 "After death, this is probably the worst thing you could ever go through," he said. 
 
 Small pieces are starting to come back, however. Recently, a Swedish song called "Sol, vind och vatten" ("Sun, Wind and Water") popped into his head as if it were on repeat all day long. He had no idea where it came from. 
 
 He doesn't recall any experiences that he and Espling shared in the 1980s, but some emotional remnants of the past remain. 
 
 Asked how he feels about Espling, he said, "I feel warm on the inside." ||||| Michael Boatwright, a U.S. citizen and Navy veteran, awoke in a Palm Springs hospital earlier this year speaking only Swedish and saying he had no memory of his past life. 
 
 Michael Boatwright spoke only Swedish and said he had no memory of his previous life after being found unconscious in a motel room in Palm Springs, Calif. (Photo: Jay Calderon, The (Palm Springs, Calif.) Desert Sun) Story Highlights Boatwright greeted in Sweden by former girlfriend 
 
 Riverside County Department of Mental Health bought his ticket 
 
 He had moved to homeless shelter after being hospitalized for five months 
 
 PALM SPRINGS, Calif. -- In the end, Michael Boatwright left the desert just as abruptly and bizarrely as he arrived. 
 
 Boatwright, a 61-year-old Navy veteran from Florida, is now in Sweden. Six months ago, Boatwright woke up at a Palm Springs hospital, speaking only Swedish, insisting he had forgotten his past. 
 
 On Tuesday, he landed at an airport in Gothenburg, Sweden — his plane ticket was purchased by the Riverside County, Calif., Department of Mental Health. He was greeted there by Ewa Espling, a woman from the past he says he forgot. Boatwright and Espling spent about three years together back in the mid-1980s, decades before he was diagnosed with amnesia. They once planned to marry, she said. 
 
 In a brief interview with The Desert Sun on Wednesday, Espling confirmed that she met Boatwright at the Swedish airport on Tuesday. She did not respond to further questions, and has said previously that Boatwright does not want media attention. Regardless, his Hollywood-style amnesia story has made international headlines. 
 
 "Walk in my shoes for one day," Boatwright said through a translator in July, when The Desert Sun first wrote about his peculiar story. "You'll experience the nightmare of a lifetime." 
 
 Boatwright's plane ticket to Sweden was an unusual solution to an unusual situation, Jerry Wengerd, director of the Riverside County Department of Mental Health, said Wednesday. 
 
 STORY: Man awakes in Palm Springs with apparent amnesia 
 
 The Mental Health Department will sometimes purchase travel tickets for homeless transients who have no contacts or prospects in Riverside County, Wengerd said. But the trips rarely extend outside California, and almost never outside the country. 
 
 In this case, the department considered every alternative, but eventually decided that sending Boatwright to Sweden was the only option, Wengerd said, adding that Boatwright had no family here, no resources and "no alternatives to homelessness." In Sweden, Boatwright had contacts who were willing to help, even if he couldn't remember them. 
 
 "We were satisfied he was not going to nowhere," Wengerd said. "He was going to where he wanted to go and to be with people he wanted to be with." 
 
 Before the ticket was bought, the department received assurances that Boatwright would have a place to live, access to mental health treatment and the opportunity to stay in Sweden for "the long term," despite the fact that he is an American citizen. Wergerd said he could not provide more details due to patient confidentiality concerns. 
 
 Wengerd said he personally approved the plane ticket purchase but he could not remember the price. A flight from Palm Springs to Gothenburg would cost between $2,000 and $4,000. 
 
 Boatwright's story began on Feb. 28, when the he was found unconscious in a Palm Springs motel room and taken to a local hospital. 
 
 When Boatwright awoke, he insisted he had lost his memory and forgotten how to speak English. He called himself Johan Ek. Doctors diagnosed him with amnesia, and he was kept in the hospital for five months as staff searched for a safe way to release him. 
 
 In the months that followed, The Desert Sun discovered that Boatwright had flown to Palm Springs from China a few days before he was found in the motel room. A friend in China had bought the ticket for Boatwright. 
 
 He was destitute and depressed over the remarriage of his ex-wife and banking on long-shot hopes of landing a local job as a tennis coach. 
 
 Hospital officials said Boatwright's family was unable to take him into their care. The hospital also reached out to the Department of Veterans Affairs, but the agency ruled that inpatient care was not justified in Boatwright's case. 
 
 Eventually, in early August, Boatwright moved to Roy's Desert Resource Center, a homeless shelter just outside Palm Springs run by the Coachella Valley Association of Governments. 
 
 Boatwright stayed there for two weeks. 
 
 Boatwright's flight to Sweden was first reported by CNN. 
 
 "I just want to be able to live a normal life and hopefully get my memory back," Boatwright told CNN on Tuesday after landing in Sweden. 
 
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– Don't you hate it when you dock your six-figure boat in a harbor and then forget all about it for two years? This somehow happened to a well-to-do Norwegian man who moored his $108,000 boat in a Swedish harbor, reports the BBC. Two years later, a Facebook and media campaign launched by police to find the owner finally jogged his memory. He had a vague recollection of selling the boat, but, no, it's still his. "You have to be very wealthy to be able to forget about a boat in this price range," says a Swedish police official quoted in the Daily Mirror. The owner has to pay up two years' worth of docking fees, but authorities suspect it won't be a problem.