Kopenhaven

Location: Copenhagen, objective: Job interview with A.P. Moller Maersk.

While I rang the bell at the H&R headquarters of AP Moller Maersk in Copenhagen for my Job interview looking like a tourist, my Hugo Boss suit was laying on a beach in Lanzarotte. The bagage handelers had "misplaced" my luggage, and it did not arrive on time for the job interview! A worn down pair of counterfeit Diesel jeans from Bangkok, Ecco sneakers and a stained Abercumbie&Finch polo was all I could count on for first impressions. Oh well... the H&R girls at Maersk were lovely and seemed to comprehend. Well see if they invite me for a follow up...

Anyway, while there, I spotted three super yachts. First up, the PARSIFAL III. An absolutely stunning 54 meter ketch (two masts - a main and a mizzen- with the steering wheel between the two) build in 2005 by Perini navi. She is 60 meters high, and her draught is 4.5 meters. If you have an extra 200.000 euros laying around, you could rent her for about a week (Don't forget to invite me if you plan on doing so). Click here for more info and pics on her offcial website.

If you happen to be the skipper of the Parsifal III and are reading this, click here to hire me as a Deckhand cook and scuba intructor (RYA certified, Padi certified and good food lover;)

Second the Anakena, a 40 meter sailingyacht also a ketch. Build in 1996 by Royal Huisman. She has won a couple of awards including "Best sailing yacht" and "Best Interior". If you would like to have a peek at this interior and dream away, click here.

Needless to say, if you googled on ANAKENA because you are the owner and now reading this, do not hesitate contacting me for some good company while exploring the icecaps (she has been reinforced for ice). I like oysters and champagne, so stalking up on that before mailing me would be grant ;-)

Last but not least: SKAT! yes, SKAT. The

64the Largest yacht in the world, owned by a former software engineer from Microsoft. She is over 70 meters long and it will cost a staggering 1/4 million euro's just to fill her up (she'll take 210.000 liters of fuel). There are elevators, jacuzzi's, a gym, motorcycles, and ofcourse a helicopter in matching colours. For more info and pics on this immaculate yacht with her beautifull lines, click here or here.

If you would like to know who has the biggest, check this site.

Greece! After 9 days at sea.

After exactly 1628 Nautical miles, and exactly 9 times 24 hours, we arrived on Kos. My longest non stop trip ever, and despite the many rude awakenings, I would do it again no questions asked. Obviously the Swan 68 makes such a trip a lot more exciting than say a Bavaria cruiser, a Sun Odyssey or even a Halberg Rassy, but I would even have done it on a 30 foot sailboat (as long as there is an Epirb). The ‘Lady in Red’ is not your regular 68 Swan. She’s fully loaded with 15 Lewmar winches, the biggest one being a size 111 (see pic) and most of them being push button with three gears. There are two coffee Grinders (or pedestals) for buffing up your biceps underway or for use when racing. The mast and boom are carbon, and there is a set of Kevlar racing sails as well. Below deck you will find a dishwasher, a washing machine, dryer, ice maker, water maker, air-conditioning, stereo and TV, fridges, automatic toilets, etc… etc… obviously all carpentry is done in teak. Very Nice!

Does all this luxury lessen the adventure sensation? Well, maybe, but luckily we had a rope stuck in our propeller (you would be amazed of all the garbage you see floating in the middle of no-where) allowing me to go for a free dive at 7 o’clock in the morning (after 1 hour of sleep for I just finished my watch) in a 3000 meters deep swimming pool. With flippers that were too large, a snorkel and goggles that where to small, a rope tied around my waist and a leatherman® in my right hand, I took a deep breath and swam for the Maxi prop. While hanging on the prop, cutting the rope like a madman I couldn’t help to peak down into the great unknown. There it was. The Med, the sea I was used too, but vertically this time: a shade of blue that slowly gets darker and darker and is filled with aquatic animals. A priceless moment! Luckily I had ten other such moments, for I had to come up for air that many times. I had to hurry, an ocean tanker came our way and did not respond to hour radio call “please alter your course, we have a diver down!” What are the odds?

Need you sailboat delivered, moved, or you just bought one and have little experience? Send me an email. We’ll sail it together and I’ll teach you a trick or two…Or you have a boat and want to go round the world? Not alone? I might be interested… send me an email, besides sailing: all expeditions welcome! None of the above? Send me an email anyway!

Do you want to expand your sailing experience yourself? I built mine up using crew seeker websites.... They work! And remember… sail to travel. Don’t travel to sail!



p.s. Click on images to enlarge

Dolphins, Sea turtles, Whales and helicopters

The trip is very nice, we’ve been visited by dolphins at least two times a day since departure, and we spotted some blowing whales in the distance. A very nice big sea turtle of about 1.5 meters in diameter floated next to the boat as well. During my night watch, sailing close to the Sardinian coast the funniest thing happened. The weather was a bit rough, I was dressed in foul weather gear and the rest of the crew was sleeping. At one point I looked behind me, and saw a – what I thought to be – a sailboat closing in very fast. I clearly saw a hoisted sail and the port and starboard light (red and green). At first I thought it to be a hydrofoil Catamaran or something. I quickly grabbed the binoculars to get a positive ID. At first, no sails where to be seen, I thought I was hallucinating, clearly something was there. As it closed in, it appeared to be a helicopter, with its search lights on. It had me in its spotlights for about 5 minutes, hovering maybe 30 meters above sea level just next to the boat. I looked up, wondering who was looking down at me and why. I guess the where checking for illegal immigrants from Africa or so?

From Malaga to Mallorca

After exactly two weeks I find myself sailing back into the bay of Palma for the second time, this time on the ‘Lady in Red’ the nr 19 of the 68 Swan series. And although Mallorca is filling up with the world finest Superyachts because of the Superyacht cup to be held here next week, the Swan still manages to turn a view heads. And righteous so, she’s drop dead gorgeous. I would have contented myself with just a peak of the interior, and a walk on deck, but luckily faith has given me a lot more. If you have to do a sailyacht delivery, it might aswell be a Swan, right? We started the journey in Puerto Sotogrande (near Malaga) about three nights ago (about I say for I have lost track already), and are headed to the other end of the Med, Kos Greece. It is approx 1600 NM. We have planned to do it in about 10 day at sea without landfalls. Just a quick fuel fill up in Palma and off we go again. Funny detail, during the fill up I spotted Limitless; the worlds 10th biggest super yacht I believe it is, owned by Victoria Secrets (underwear!) founder.

Hoisting sail again

Saturday 2nd of June, I’m flying back to the Med. I will be sailing from Malaga (Spain) to Kos (Greece). It seems I am moving up in the world of sailing, because this time the boat is a real jewel. A 72 foot 1999 Swan, one of the nicest and fastest production sailing yachts of its class. It’s unbelievable really. Every time I saw a Swan in a port or Marina somewhere I got real excited. I would look at the Swan Yachts for hours, wondering what it would be like to sail one, or what the interior would look like. In less than 4 days I will know al this. And I will be able to enjoy her for 10 days straight… at sea. I’ll be posting my experiences here soon….

In the mean while you could surf to Swan’s website. Or if you are sitting in the office, and want to dream away a bit you might want to click here . If you are looking for a way to spend a quiet vacation with your wife, this little ship would be the thing to charter. If planning on being promiscuous on a big scale, purchasing this baby would get you 99% there.

Mallorca

Let me say something about the Mallorcan hospitality: there is none. As soon as a traded the boat for the bus to Palma, I got confronted with this lovely fact. The bus driver was not shy about expressing the fact that he did not like me paying with a 20 euro bill. With a lot of Goder! this and Puta! that, he pointed to the poster the size of a zigzag, printed out by an empty matrix printer inside of the bus, stating the rule! My excuses and explaining that it was my first time taking a bus on Mallorca left him cold. So I pocketed my 20 and sat down. Similar with the reception lady of the hotel in Palma, she simply shrugged her shoulders after she did not receive my reservation which I had made via http://www.booking.com/ . A reservation nr was worthless…

When I arrived at my lovely 3 star hotel Torre in El Arenal I discovered why the hospitality was lacking. It is the Mc Donald’s Mecca of the tourist industry! Now read carefully for I shall only write this once: if you consider yourself to have so much as half a brain cell, you want to stay well clear of Arenal, or the whole of Mallorca for that matter, just to be safe really. Unless you fancy eating what you eat at home, speaking the language you speak at home, being surrounded by the same neighbouring cultures (and luckily they all proudly show their nation somehow) while getting extremely drunk and while being profited by the tourist industry with the lowest of standards. The hotel was as sturdy as a carton box I think. During the nights I had to snap on the light every ten minutes to convince myself there was no one sleeping next to me, snoring the night away. I must not complain, for I had a window in my bathroom. Not being able to close the window because of the flush build between it, did not bother me as much as the view, the neighbour’s bathroom! Very amusing if you are located next to a hot lesbian couple I suppose, but I am afraid they don’t venture anywhere near dubious places like that.

Then Transavia topped it off by wanting to make me pay 24 euros for 4 kilos too much luggage while checking in for Amsterdam. 24 euros for 4 kilos? You’d have to be lugging around solid gold for it to be profitable to cough up the money. Maybe the extra stars at the hotel where because of balance scales at one’s disposal, and I was withheld that information. I sure wasn’t going to pay 24 euros for some worn down dirty underwear. So I did them one up, I got out a pair of shoes and a sweater. You can imagine this was quite a scene, for my duffel was packed to the max with the heavy apparel at the bottom. Very dirty clothing and chorizo sausages spread over the airport floor. I could see some people slam their forehead, ‘Why had they never thought of this themselves’. . The flight was delayed by the way… 2.5 hours!

Luckily ‘we are still free to question all rules, and apply logic!’

From Sicily to Mallorca - 350 NM

Its 15 May 5:05 AM as I am writing this. There is 2800 meters of sea beneath the boat, who knows what swims there? We are about a 100 Nautical Miles separated from the Mallorcan coast. The last 50 Hours or so have been a wild ride. We were clause hauled in 25 knots of winds, doing about 10 knots in a savage sea. For those that do not know about sailing; picture trying to sleep, eat and drink, get dressed and so on … on a mechanical bull for 50 hours, and you get a pretty good idea what its like. Needless to say, I was only able to acquire a grand total of about 4 hours of sleep. The other reason being, there is only two of us sailing the boat, doing 4 hour shifts night and day. My greatest respect goes out to all those professional solo sailors. I can now vaguely imagine what a mental discipline they must have.

Finally the winds have settled down now allowing me to write this piece. The sky is clear and filled with stars. I am guessing the Dolphins will be with us soon, they usually do come and pay us a visit at sunset. They’ll approach us like little torpedo’s from the side and joyfully play with the bow of the ship. I can’t wait. There is nothing like being greeted by dolphins early in the morning on a little ship on a lonely sea (I have only seen one other vessel for the last 50 hours), while watching the sun rise out of the water. It makes the 50 hour bull ride worth while J

The trip will come to an end on Mallorca. What started April 15th in Le Lavandou, ends after 1700 NM on May 16th 2007 on Palma de Mallorca. It´s been a great adventure and I have learned quite a lot. Not only about sailing, but also about people, the sailing way of life, the emotions that come with sailing, ocean creatures and how not to troll a line to catch Tuna (or have I been unlucky?). I have also met some interesting people, like Stephan that I met in Velletta, a 45 year old Swiss dude that is sailing around in his 8 meter sailing boat (a dheler) with aft cabin and shelters a little cat ‘Gatusso’. He has been sailing around the med, and is now planning on descending the east coast of Africa all on the plastic tip of a shoe string. What a Character… Solo on an 8 meter boat! I have been on the boat, and I can assure you, it feels like little more than the rubber Dinghy we use to get to shore when at anchor. But I do have to agree with him, “The worst day at sea, still beats the best day in the office!”

Or the Englishman I met in a restaurant in Cagliari that I had recognized from the Marina. He looked like someone that had been missing in action for a while and walked straight out of a Vietnam movie. You just don’t see that many people wearing a piece of worn down T-shirt as a headband anymore. But when I asked him about his story… Boy, was I in for a treat. You can read books about sailing, put people have to write them first, and it is a shame this man is just too lazy, or does not see an added value of writing one. But this is his story in a nutshell.. .

Apparently he had moved from the UK to North Carolina US and was working as a roofer and living out of a Van. Living out of a Van, might sound like an easy lifestyle, but you are not considered to belong to Society, well maybe somewhere beneath the lower part of it. Anyway, he was getting a lot of hassle from the police and it was tiring him. A colleague then suggested he needed a boat. A sailboat! If you life in a sailboat, you are a traveller, and an adventurer and you move up the scale of society. Somehow he ended up with a Contessa 32 for 14 thousand yankee dollars. It worked, the hassle was over, and he lived on board for a couple of years before someone approached him, and told him he admired his boat, ‘ nice Contessa 32’. He knew nothing about boats, and was just using it to life on, but curiously he then searched after ‘contessa 32’on the internet, and discovered that his boat was worth three times as much in the UK than the price he had paid for it. A no brainer really, he needed to get the boat to England.

Now, the one liner in this conversation that did it for me was the what he said next, and I quote: “The first time ever I hoisted the sails on my sailboat -or any other sailboat for that matter- was when I set out to cross the Atlantic”. BOINK! Here I am, going of to South Africa to get RYA Certified, sailing 1700Nm in the med to get some experience because one day I want to sail around the world… this guy just sets of across the Atlantic with no experience at all to make a couple of bucks. 28 days it took him to cross it, he was given a handheld GPS with one waypoint and that was it. When I asked him if he stood watch at night he told me that he had an alarm set at 20 minute intervals. It would sound; he’d have a peak around outside and got back to sleep for another 20 minutes. This lasted for three nights. After that, he decided it was well worth trading the remote risk of a collision, for a good night sleep. During his 28 days he saw 5 other vessels ´Spics on the horizon´. He only ate Pasta by the way.

He never did sell his Contessa, he wouldn’t sell it for ‘No money’. He’s been across three times since, and now realizes how lucky he’s been first time round. He didn’t even know the existence of reefing back then.

From people like these, I learned that "it takes a lot of talent to age without getting old".

Beating to Sardenia

Well.. The trip from Sciacca Sicily Back to Sardenia was quite an adventure. Although the winds were comming from were we had to go, we decided to head out anyway, resulting in beating against the waves and the wind for 2 days and 2 nights. It is amazing how a nice spacious boat becomes an place where even the most simple tasks become very difficult in certain weather conditions. Going to the toilet, or having a cup of tea becomes a menace. But, we made it.



Tomorrow we are of to Mallorca. A 325 Mile run, just me and the owner. Vince had to leave to take care of other things. It will be a tough one, but at least the winds are promising so far. I am not expecting to get much sleep, instead I will get a nice tan.




During trips I run a fishing line behind the boat, to try to catch a Tuna. No luck so far, but who knows what the next trip brings. Tuna season has just started anyway....

Arrival Malta

We arrived at malta at 6:30 in the morning. I had about 2 hours of sleep the past 24 hours or so. After we checked in at the customs, we had some breakfast and went to bed. I woke up at 16:30.

.... pic of a whale by the way............->

Don't have much time for blogging really, I will try to do my best and write some more in the future. Today we did some wreck diving at 35m deep. Please content yourself with the pics, as tomorrow we set sailf for Sicily at 8:00 in the morning. :)

From Sardenia to Malta

We have been at sea for two days straight. Still 100 Nautical miles to go to Malta, we will probably arrive at night. We departed from Cagliari in Sardinia, after having sailed down the east coast of it. A lot has happened, we got pulled over by the ‘Guardia Finazia’, and Nelson the autopilot died, and we had to steer by hand for a while. Not very hard, but it makes a big difference for the night shifts. With the auto pilot on, one person can sail the entire ship. Trimming the sails, staying on course, and dodging other vessels can all be done while the ship steers it self, allowing the others to sleep. Luckily we were able to fix it. Yesterday we received some company from a school of dolphins, it must have been thousands. Curious animals, some of them swim on their side right next to the ship, just to look up out of the water interested on what is happening on deck. At least so it seems. They seem to have hypes and hypes of fun.

We sailed across a family of whales as well. I know, I couldn’t believe it myself! Flabergasted as we were, we almost forgot to be careful not to hit one. Sometimes we encounter a sea turtle coming up for some air.

The start. Hyeres - Ajaccio

We had about 10 knots of wind, the evening sun and a comfortable air temperature as we sailed away from hyeres. Dinner was served, and a bottle of red opened in the cockpit. Nelson the auto pilot and our most appreciated and respected crew member was doing the steering. We had finally set course towards Ajaccio Corsica and were ceasing the moment.

As the sun slowly disappeared, so did the land and the sea was pitch black to be lit only by a million stars. We split the night three ways, and the first watch was mine. I couldn’t see much, but some faint lights in the distance. The lights closed in, and I started to distinguish cruise ships, big tankers and other little sailboats. Everything seemed to be the way I had imagined it. Using the radar, I was able to predict the course of other vessels, and alter course in advance to avoid collisions. Forget Second life people, this is the real thing.

The next morning we encountered dense fog, close to the coast of ajaccio. One behind the wheel, one behind the radar, and one running back and forth between the two for communication seemed to work best for us. Pure excitement it was.

Projected course to steer

Obiahman is going sailing again. After having obtained the RYA day skipper practical and the RYA coastal skipper/ yachtmaster theory in South Africa, Obiahman is ready to put it all to the test in the Med. Obiahman shall embark on a 48 foot Dufour prestige, and sail it across the seas in the Mediterranean Sea together with Vince and the proud owner.




The projected route for the sailing trip is from hyères to Corsica, Sardinia, Malta, Sicily and finally to Mallorca (see picture). Visit this log, to follow it all to a T.