Saturday 29 March 2014

How to make your first love fall in love again.... this time with sailing!

There are many great relationships, where the man loves sailing, and the woman loves staying ashore. People have therefore asked me the question: "How did you get that woman to love sailing as well?". What I should have done, is use "Would you like to sail around the world with me?" as a standard pick-up line. The second question would then not be: "What is your favourite dish" or "What sports do you do" or even  "What music do you like?" no the second question would be: "Do you ever get sea sick?". But no... when I met Elizabeth, on the glacier, she made me quickly forget about the questions I should have asked, and instead we looked at the stars on the glacier, we looked in each others eyes and we fell in love. Only too late did I realise, that the woman I was now madly in love with had never sailed before in her life... However, sailingwise she did have a few things going for her, she was a surfer, and into kayaking, and I even managed to get her to like snow and water kite surfing. Stay tuned for how I got the love of my life into sailing.
The Plan: Happy couple sailing in fantastic weather

The North Sea in Spring is perhaps not the best place to take the Love of your Life sailing for the first time. That is, if you want her to go sailing with you ever again, and especially if you would like to sail halfway around the globe with her. The cunning plan, was to introduce Elizabeth gently into sailing, stacking all possible positive factors to my benefit that I could think off: Starting with a spacious 40 foot catamaran, filled with some of our best friends. Sailing Easter time in Greece - good weather guaranteed, and topped off with rounding Santorini, the most romantic island.

A spacious 40 foot Nautitech catamaran
Some of our best friends were joining on the trip - Thank you Amira for taking the picture
Easter in Greece - good weather guaranteed

I should have known better, and Lady Luck ended up teaching me a lesson or two. While back in  Norway is was the best Easter ever (30 degrees, blue sky, hardly any wind), in Greece it wast the worst Easter since the past 15 years. We experienced 12 degrees throughout the week, lots of rain, and multiple days with 35 knots of wind. (we decided not to sail on the day it was blowing a staggering 45 knots). Easter is to early for the Meltemi, so this was a "Normal" storm being thrown at us.

This was my worst scenario being realised. And, off course it could have been the end of the line, for a Relationship that included sailing. Even worse, this could have been the end of the line for A Small Boy with a Big Dream.  On Andy's birthday, we rounded Santorini in miserable weather. However, this made Andy's birthday cake taste all the better that evening.

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Santorini on Andy's birthday. A whole lot less romantic, in the rain and 12 C.
Making Andy's birthday cake taste all the better.

Sailing back to Athens in 35 knots




With the sun and a good friend, 35 knots does not look so bad

Mono hull passing by at 35 knots of true wind speed
Sharing the fun: helming in 35 knots on a wet, outlying helm station. We are still smiling :)
This radar reflector (btw it does NOT work as radar reflector) came down in Elizabeths face. The only reason this was a happy ending were the protective sunglasses.
To make matters worse, we did not have enough warm clothing (we were actually very well prepared for "typical" Greek weather, not for the Straight of Siberia), the Nautitech catamaran has an outlying, and very wet steering stand, we did not thrust the autopilot to steer us through these waves, so we had a very wet steering experience, and to top it all off, Elizabeth got a radar reflector hurled at her!!!

After this episode, Lady Luck had her way, and Elizabeth was put off sailing for the rest of her life. I am now working to get a professional crew to sail the boat to Australia with me. No! This is how it could have gone but it didn't. Elizabeth loves sailing, especially in bad weather. And even better, she did not get sea sick even once. Rather than Lady Luck stacking the odds against me, perhaps she knew that the only way to get Elizabeth into sailing, was to make it challenging enough.

This was later confirmed, by Elizabeth taking a sailing course in February in the Solent. Again it was blowing 35 knots. She came back, all smiles, and very confident with her sailing skills.  Now she says that sailing in light wind days is boring, and sailing only gets intersesting at 35 knots!

Thank you Lady Luck!

And thank you to our friends, who where there with us in Greece!!

 And most of all thank you Elizabeth, for falling in love again, this time with sailing!!!

Friday 28 March 2014

Inspiring the next generation

Today I saw some young children in optimists sailing past SaltyPaws here in La Rochelle. I hope SaltyPaws got to inspire the next generation of small boys (and girls) with big dreams.

Thursday 27 March 2014

A Small Boy with a Big Dream

A small boat that led to big dreams:The Optimist
I like the Optimist. When I was 7, sailing started for me, in an optimist. I instantly fell in love with sailing, the freedom, harnessing the power of nature to be able to go anywhere and the closeness to the elements.

Growing up, every boy has a dream, to do something big in life. My dream has always been to sail around the world... In that sense, the Optimist is very aptly named, as this small boat led to big dreams. One day, with my brother and some friends, each in their own Optimist, the sky rapidly became darker and darker and the wind picked up more and more. One by one, the other Optimists headed for shore. I was having so much fun, that I headed away from shore, so that the instructor would take longer to reach me with his rib, and tell me to head back to shore.

To realise this dream, I have worked to gain all the skills, and the paperwork, to be able to sail a boat, big enough to take around the world. Sailing in the optimist, I would go on, until I had to use one hand, to pry the sheet out of my other cold and tired hand. As I grew up, I realised the best way to learn something myself. That is to become a sailing instructor off course. On one of my instructor training sessions (the one where you need to raise and lower the sails of a PolyValk in under 60 seconds) I practiced this maneuver, until my hands first bled, and finally were covered  in callouses.

Clever 23
British Hunter 31
Spurt 25, small but very capable and seaworthy
My parents helped me by getting a small capable and seaworthy sailing boat, a Spurt 25. This boat was capable, both in the Dutch inland waters (which are very shallow) and also on the Waddenzee and Ijsselmeer. I have many fond memories, sailing with my family on this boat, drying out on the Waddenzee, loosing the engine out at sea, and sailing in the Friese waterways and Lakes.

Bavaria Match 38
I was an official sailing instructor at age 15 (one year before the "legal" age). (Please keep this between you and me...) As I grew up, I went from sailing instructor on Optimists and Polyvalks, to instructor on catamarans, small sailing yachts and later sea going "big" yachts. My student job was water-ski and yacht sailing instructor (23 feet Clever) on one school, and sea sailing instructor (31 foot British Hunter, and Bavaria 38 Match). By this time I was ready...

But wait, this was 10 years ago. Why the big Wait? I never wanted to sail around the world by myself. I needed to find the right partner. Perhaps I should have used "Would you sail around the world with me" as my standard pick-up line, but I didn't (I dont like "pick-up" lines as a matter of fact).

On the glaciers in Norway I fell in love with a girl that had never sailed before. Also, with the girl came two cats. Both factors, that do not help when you want to sail around the world.  This could have been the end of the line for my dream. But like a hollywood movie, this was just the cliffhanger, leading up to the happy ending. After just one week of sailing, Elizabeth fell in love again, this time with sailing. And it was Elizabeth that proposed we would sail around the world. Her only condition: Take the cats with us. And we will.

The End (or a new beginning)

Wednesday 12 March 2014

The Crew

Click the links below to learn more about our crew :


















Elizabeth -Anchors aweigh! (a perspective from the first mate)













Luna















Tux

Sunday 9 March 2014

Some inspirational passages by T.S. Elliot shared by friends

From Little Gidding:

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time”.

From The Dry Salvages

“Fare forward, travelers! Not escaping from the past 
Into indifferent lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think 'the past is finished'
Or 'the future is before us'.
At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial,
Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear,
The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language)

Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;
You are not those who saw the harbor
Receding, or those who will disembark.
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
At the moment which is not of action or inaction
You can receive this: "on whatever sphere of being
The mind of man may be intent
At the time of death" - that is the one action
(And the time of death is every moment)
Which will fructify in the lives of others:
And do not think of the fruit of action.
Fare Forward.”

Anchors aweigh! (a perspective from the first mate)

First mate log entry number 1:  8-March-2014

First mate?!!??  But my business card says I am a senior engineer working for an oil and gas company in Norway!  So why am I writing this message now with job title "first mate"?  Perhaps I should start from the beginning.

I hail from the US, a quaint little harbor town on the St. Claire shores of Michigan, perhaps you've heard of it...Detroit?   Well more like the inner suburbs on the corner of "plain lane" and "nothing to do avenue".  The sort of comfortable place where the idea of sailing is spoken like taking a cold shower and ripping up 100 dollar bills as fast as possible.  Fast forward a few years to 2008 when I came to Norway for work.  I thought to myself, I'll just be here for a couple years then find my way back to the land of convenience.  Back then I would have never told you that while on this assignment I would meet the love of my life and in 3 weeks time quit my steady job to sail around the world in a 44 ft catamaran....with our 2 cats.  Up until now my life has been fairly linear.  You know, school, job, brush my teeth 3 times a day, lather, rinse, repeat!  On April 1st, that will suddenly change as we start our journey sailing for 18 months from Europe to Australia on a path that is as predictable as the wind itself.

Being from the US, I've never sailed.  A country known for its land lubbers (and blubbers), a sea faring nation we are not.  The first time I ever stepped foot on a sail boat was just recently.  Just a couple weeks ago I took my FIRST sailing course so I could learn to rescue my partner if he falls overboard.  I am one of the most clumsy and uncoordinated people I know and here I am having to command a half million dollar vessel when its my turn on watch and my husband is asleep?!? While I am a whiz at my particular flavor of engineering, I haven't the first clue how to fix a boat when the engine fails, or how to operate a dinghy, or even the navigation system.  My language skills are perfect so long as everyone speaks English!  The worst part is that I am a total control freak in normal life.  But what happens now when the world of "normal" doesn't apply?  How does a person control total chaos?

Don't be fooled, getting over these challenges and fears is the reward I'm looking forward to!  If all I learn on this trip is how to sail, a bit of Spanish, a bit of culture, repair a diesel engine, how to not have a panic attack in stressful situations, and learn to be a bit more practical, it will have been well worth the missing paycheck! I'm not talking out of stupidity here, being able to stay calm in emergencies and solve problems under pressure is a rare skill, one that you don't earn working behind a computer screen your entire life.   Moving around to different places and starting new jobs always has a difficult beginnings, but, fortunately they don't stay that way forever....and that's when the fun begins.  Luckily my darling companion is an expert sailor and so we have at least all the skills on board the ship we need to make headway while I get caught up.  And our two cats are always on cue to provide comic relief.

And so here it is only 3 weeks away, the day I never thought would come when I would put Norway in the "rear view mirror" just as I have many of the places I have lived.  But this move, unlike the others, has no clear schedule or destination on the manifest.  The new 2 year plan is much simpler really, discover a simpler life on a sailboat and find out what happens later.  Perhaps this time the destination is not something I can find on a map.

Anchors aweigh!

Elizabeth