The past couple of months all things came together and we succeeded to depart! Finally, because also getting to that point is quite a journey.

Plans

We started dreaming of this trip a couple of years ago, actually since COVID-19 we noticed that we valued family time more than we thought. Both Edwin & Mirjam (me) have been working for many years in a high energy industries and also got confronted with where our limits are. We both experienced that balance in life is most important and that sometimes you reach your limits. We have learned to listen to our hearts and follow the road that we are mend to follow.

So, the plan started to grow on us, to sail away with our little family of three and see what that road would bring us.

Boat

First we looked for the right boat, one that fits our needs as a family, is sturdy and trustworthy and one that we can make our home and receive family and guests on.

We found our ship end of Summer 2023 and the true work started by then. Eventually, we had 10 months to get to know our ship, make it our home, do some refitting and get ourselves trained.

Life

Meanwhile, life continued as usual, our jobs were as demanding as normal (including several business trips), Philou went to school for the first year, we spent as much time with our family as we could. Especially with our parents, them being of age and health getting more and more fragile.

In these last months, we made sure that my mother (M) had the opportunity to spent as much time with Philou as possible (them being unseperatable) and more importantly, spent time with my father (M), since he was living his last months. A very precious period, I will tell more about later.

So two months before we left, we lost him and needed time to say goodbye and process this lifechanging moment. Before starting a new one…

We just continued, my father would have wanted us to. It gave us a goal to work towards and just live a real life, the life that we dreamed of.

Boat struggles

Nevertheless, in the last two months of preparation, crazy enough, all jobs were going on hold. Not because we decided to, but because they just did… the boat jobs weren’t going forward, we couldn’t find renters for our home, nothing sold… etc. We felt like we just had to undergo this period and wait until things would start flowing again. Funnily enough, they only did, just days before we left…

Edwin was struggling with the large jobs that were still on his shoulders, he didn’t feel supported by any of the contractors we contracted (exceptions are there e.g. Nautic ICT). Not only not supported, but not doing what was agreed, saying things that just weren’t true and damaging our trust in the people we collaborated with.

You must understand, this boat is our home, our save haven, it should protect us under the worst circumstances. When you need people that have a certain expertise and they don’t life up to that, it makes you very frustrated.

We decided to push through and leave towards our home base Rotterdam as soon as we could, ready or not.

Move to the Veerhaven

We always planned to spent our last two weeks before starting our journey in the Veerhaven, Rotterdam. Not to do jobs anymore, no… to have time to say farewell to everybody, to bring Philou to school for the last week in our cargo bike and drink coffees on terraces…

Well, we did, but we also had to do major work on the engine and watermaker, which made living on board close to impossible. Nonetheless, we loved being in the Veerhaven, in the middle of our city. Moments of loving and hating boat life just came & went….

Help

We do feel we had an angel on our shoulder, when we got help from an unexpected source (thanks Toet!). As we didn’t trust the work that was done on our engine, we had to find someone that was able to really advise us on what to do. Via the network of a dear friend, we got in touch with a professional company (working for commercial fleets) and especially Rient spent his free moments on helping us. ‘That’s what sailors do, help each other, when needed…’ he said. Well not something we take lightly and definitely something we are very grateful for.

Countdown

So the final two weeks where very hectic, from farewell parties, to little girls play dates on board, to complete chaos while doing boat work. And let me assure you, boat work means that the whole boat is turned upside down and inside out…

Nevertheless, is was hard, but we were so happy to be moving forward again after crazy weeks of pushing but not really moving. It made us realize that positive and negative co-exist and can’t exist without each other… on board just a little bit more intense maybe 😉

And finally just two days before take off, we got the jobs on board done… Edwin still had a lot of work finishing and prepping our home, and took so much stuff back to the boat… so the last moments, were all about stuffing the boat the right way…

We did and left, just the three of us, Rotterdam, our beloved city…

Our adventure started…