When you set off on a longer boat trip, inevitably the question of looking after yourself at sea will arise. Your General Practitioner is a long way away, and when visiting the chemist, he or she may not speak your language. So how do you deal with this? In the car you have a First […]
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Looking forward to 2019 (Ngahue IV at the crane at van Swaay Bruinisse) Sir Robin Knox-Johnson successfully sailed the world solo with his ketch de Suhaili of less than 10 meters in length. Arne and Helene Martensson did it in several stages, including Antartica, with their Hallberg-Rassy 62, the Yaghan. Longer sea voyages can really […]
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Back in Europe – improvements and preparations for our next departure: Were we too rushed in wanting to achieve our November-2017 departure date? Very likely! We have certainly learnt about the complexity of a larger ship, with all of its extra bells and whistles, the precise operation of which we are only now beginning to […]
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Back to Europe: Suddenly we had all the time to go back. Because of the wind and weather patterns, it is better to start with the return trip to Europe from the British Virgin Islands (BVI) from May onwards. We could remain a good month in Curaçao, before heading towards Puerto Rico and the BVI. […]
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The Caribbean: (Christmas in Martinique) (The Fort of Martinique) (The Market of Martinique) Due our further world travel plans, we would not be staying in the Caribbean for too long. In order to arrive “in time” in French Polynesia, you have to be “on time” to transit through the […]
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The ARC 2017 (Las Palmas ARC fancy dress) (Las Palmas ARC procession NL delegation) On November 17, 2017 we were ready: 189 boats departed from Las Palmas: the fast boys were first; the other boats half an hour later. With lots of music and loud applause, every ship is sent off the marina: an atmosphere […]
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The Departure On the 21st July 2017 at the crack of dawn we left our berth in Nieuwpoort, to sail via Brighton, Portland and Falmouth to Portugal. Exciting, as the route from Falmouth to Sines in Portugal would be our first extended sea voyage! (Provisions onboard in Brighton) The Gulf of Biscay has a formidable […]
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The boat: Everything that was renewed – or added to the boat Our HR53 had mainly sailed in the Baltic Sea and a bit in the North Sea. So many things that are needed for longer sea and ocean trips had to be built in now. Our starting point was that these should be easy […]
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Found our “new” boat We have been through a lot on our quest for that larger boat, especially during a few adventurous journeys through Southern Europe. All together we viewed 8x HR 53, 1x HR49 and 4x HR48. Sellers and owners often looked at us with skewed eyes because we crawled over their boat […]
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The start of a dream Since the nineties I had planned to sail my Hallberg-Rassy 29 (and later an HR37) to my native country, New Zealand. I worked extensively on both Rassies to make them “ocean-ready”. It was not until 2013 that these romantic dreamy plans became concrete thanks to a fixed end-point for (early-) […]
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