S01E01 | Sailing Sea Rover started in 2020. Or did it?

THIS WAS MY FIRST HOME PAGE TEXT 😅🔥 Maybe now my first blogpost?!

Stage 1:
I started sailing when I was about six years old and I hated it. It was rainy, too windy and I remember it as being very cold while it was summer. Not a very nice memory or experience. Then I probably started to like it because of my cousins. They were all six to ten years older than me and thus a real adventeruous example. Every year we sailed and they enjoyed it very much. And so did I.

Stage 2:
Since then I sailed several times on a yearly basis on smaller open sailboats with friends during summertime. I remember the first sails together with one of my best friends whilst the boat was all tilted in the wind and I was down in the boat having the cutest-anxious face you can imagine on a seemingly-fearless high school kid. I always had to sail with this same friend. As he knew how to rig and prepare the boat in order to sail and I never got the hang of it. There came a point in our sailing relationship that all that changed very abruptly.

Stage 3:
After several years of leisure sailing me and my friend decided we wanted to buy our own sailboat. This way we could sail whenever we want and learn more of the ropes and maintenance of owning a sailing vessel. Then things went quick. We looked at several good looking boats. Mainly Kolibries, for the connoisseur amongst us. But then one of our advisors along this road pointed us out to a free Fly Tour open sailboat which we could burrow for the summer. We greedily accepted his offer and had one of the best summers ever. At the end of this summer I was on my first ever true sailing holiday with my partner and then love at first site happened. It does exist. And yes: “you know when you find it”.

Stage 4:
In the last lock before arriving to our home port we encountered the soon-to-be Sea Rover. I met with the owner while we were waiting in the lock together and we exchanged contactdetails. After 3 weeks of dreaming about the ship and looking several times a day to the only picture I shot of the vessel, I decided that at least I could go, have a look and learn more about such large sail yachts. After I did, I left with more knowledge and the idea that this was it. But those two weeks after, it still got to me on a daily basis. So I decided on a bold move and continue my learning experience by doing a lunatic offer to the owner. But he accepted my offer because he actually found it more important that his precious boat would end up well than the money it was all worth.

I decided I would go cold turkey and move from my appartement in Rotterdam to my tiny house on the water in Rhoon (in the south of Rotterdam). It was September and people said I was nuts to move on a sail yacht just before winter was coming. I thought that if I survived this, I would enjoy it any time. And so I did! Then when you move on a boat and don’t know that much, you indulge in the material via websites, fora and you start to compare to other boats on YouTube and on boat selling websites… And the latter is where it all went wrong a second time.

Stage 5:
One day I got one of those most annoying Facebook requests of liking a Facebook page by one of my friends from studies. Normally you neglect those, but this was about “Yachts". So I clicked on it… Scrolling trough the website of this friend of my I found a sailboat in Greece that looked amazing, the story was great and the price was allright. So I called the broker. He turned out to be the brother of this friend of mine, so there was already a good connection. I asked him to tell me more about this one particular sailboat and he confirmed all my assumptions about the quality and integrity of the status of the boat. Then I did him an offer he couldn’t refuse… because it was far too low in comparison to the asking price, I thought. I actually still think it was a far too low offer for the asking price of a well maintained Beneteau Oceanis 411 in Greece. And the owner did not accept my offer immediately. He did three counter bids, but every time I hold on to my initial bidding. Also hoping that he would become weary and refused my offer so that I could continue my already audacious adventure with the first Sea Rover.