When I’m thinking about what pulled me into my looong sail, I have to go back to my childhood. This pull I felt that time at a special place when I was around 5-8 years old but the feeling was(?) / is(?) not limited to that age.
I was born in small village at the river Main in Germany. The river was for me that time very wide, although we could cross it easily while using the pedestrian bridge at the lock. However, there was always something mysterious with this crossing and we didn’t do it often.
On the other side of the river there was this special place. There still is the same road where cars are driving fast because there are no houses. In one direction the road disappeared that time into a green tunnel formed by huge trees, on the other side the road disappeared in a long curve. Whenever I was standing there watching the cars disappearing in the green mystic tunnel, I got itchy feet. The memory of this feeling lingered even when I was there as an adult after having driven along this road many times by bicycle or car. I wonder how I will feel when I go to this place after my looong sail.
Another thing happened later, in 1970, when I met with my girlfriend geli her girlfriend Renate and Renate’s boyfriend Koni. He asked me if I could get something from his apartment close by because he could not get it himself. While looking for what he needs, I found an issue of the German boating magazine “Yacht”. Curious as I always was, I opened the magazine and found an article of a sailor (possibly the late Wilfried Erdmann) about a long sail, a circumnavigation. This article infected me with virus “sailing around the world”. I still remember a picture of a sailboat inside the turquoise blue water of an atoll with the caption “somewhere between nowhere”. I wanted to experience this myself.
Thereafter, Koni and I became good friends and we talked about sailing and everything around it very often. We read books and articles and discussed their content. Among these there was for me a “virus booster”. Bernard Moitessier’s book “Cape Horn the Logical Route”.
Beside his sailing descriptions, I like the way he sailed with his wife. Since then I wanted to do this with a woman sharing life with me.
For many years, I dreamed of sailing, but I pursued an academic career instead and earned three university degrees. This was followed by a professional career.
Sailing was reduced to sailing a small boat for two persons at the Inland Sea area between Osaka and Kobe, while I conducted doctoral research at Osaka University. However, already that time, I sailed to explore new places in this area.
In the early to the mid 90s I was a crew member of the Japanese 42 ft race boat “sleeper”. It was a great escape time from Tokyo that time and I was sailing on big boat.
Then, one day in February 2015, I had another long “walk and talk” with my daughter. Among other topics, we talked again about my sailing dream. The result was that I need to buy a boat now or I will never do it.
Three days later, at my son’s place, I started looking for boats.
“A catamaran or a monohull?” became now the question.
I asked my son for his opinion about a monohull or a catamaran. “If you want to do performance sailing (on a cruising boat) you need a monohull, if you sail with friends and family you better go for a catamaran” he replied. A while later I asked the same question to my now late friend Thomas. He gave me exactly the same answer. So it was clear to me, I’ll be going for a catamaran.
At the end of November 2015 I bought my catamaran.
Together with Thomas I transferred her to the wonderful country side ACI Marina Simuni, where I had already arranged for a long term mooring. I wanted to use this marina as my base to sail around in the Mediterranean Sea, because I thought I’m too old already for going around the world. I enjoyed sailing with family and friends in the Croatian world of islands and had a great time.
During these days, I once was sitting alone in the cockpit when MaRe started talking to me. She said “Look for all my life I was sailing in the Med, I’m still young and strong, and would like to do at least once looong distance sailing”. “Hmm”, I thought and told her, “OK. Let’s do it!”