This is the first rest day, since I started working on the island of St Martin/Maarten and I’m having a hard time getting a feel for it. Surely I’m on the Caribbeans, but instead of going to snorkel or just chilling on the beach, having a lot of time makes me feel anxious as my brain switches on it’s predictive function and it constantly tries to forecast the future. What if this, what if that happens? What if I do this, how will that turn out? What if someone steps in my life, what will happen then? What ifs, what ifs, what ifs.
About St Martin / St Maarten
In retrospect of the past few weeks, I surely have reached my short-term goal finding work on the island. When departing from Las Palmas back on the 5th of February, the 3 of us had a conversation after the first few days on sea. Initially, the idea was to go to Martinique, but since all of us wanted to work and none of us speaks French (all too well), coming to this island just seemed reasonable. Erik has already spent a month here last year after crossing the ocean and he liked the island. He said people seem friendlier compared to other islands – something I cannot confirm, because I haven’t been to the other islands yet, but maybe it’s called “The friendly island” on the West Indies for a reason. I haven’t had any bad experiences so far spending here over a month now, everyone speaks English, which makes the communication smooth – in my case at least. Yes, one should know, which streets not to enter at night, or how to respond to casual small talks on the street like ‘I like your watch bro.’ – but these kind of situations can happen in every bigger European town or city as well.
Coming here, all I learned from Sam about the island upfront was, that 7 years ago it was severely hit by a hurricane, called Irma. The damage on the island was devastating and walking through the streets one can still easily tell which buildings have never been restored. The airport and the port got destroyed and the inhabitants got into resource shortages of food and other basic needs for several weeks. Per wikipedia, it was the strongest open Atlantic hurricane outside the Carribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico until surpassed by Hurricane Dorian two years later. When going around the marina with my colleague by boat, sometimes he shows me packs of buildings nicely refit looking shiny, whose roofs got torn off back in the days by Irma.
For this reason, the seasonal workers and boat owners leave the island before the 1st of June, the official start of the hurricane season. The boat owners have a good reason doing that, as insurance companies have clauses in their contracts not to insure the boats during hurricane season in certain areas – mostly towards the northern Caribbeans. Some of the owners roll the dice to ‘see what happens’ every year, but majority of them go to south towards Martinique / Trinidad / Curaćao where based on the historical data-models there is a lower likelihood of hurricanes to hit big time or they are just crossing the Atlantic to spend the summer season on the Mediterranean Sea. There is a whole science around the prediction models ran by various labs eg. like the AOML – Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Lab.
Erik’s influence
Back in November, when I started to map out this trip, my initial plan was to cross the Atlantic, get to the Caribbeans and move on towards mainland via hitchhiking other boats to eg. Nicaragua and continue the journey towards the south on land / and where necessary (as far as I know, certain places are not accessible on land, eg. the jungle between Panama to Colombia) on sea and reach Patagonia within 8-10 months sharp from start.
During the crossing however, while on a night-watch towards the end of the trip, I had a longer conversation with Erik about my travel project and he has planted some seeds in my head, that shortly after our arrival in St Martin / Maarten started to bloom. He said ‘Why not to buy your own boat and do the trip yourself to Patagonia on sea? There is another 50 thousand people, who already went north to south in South America, but tell me a guy who just started sailing, and decided to do the trip himself on sea. From then on, you could cross the strait of Magellan or Cape Horn and do the Pacific crossing. Then you are just one ocean away from circumnavigation.’
When he presented this idea, it sounded way too contradictive, because during the trip, he seemingly treated me like a child onboard. It surely came down to my lack of focus and natural tendency of daydreaming in crucial moments, but we spent overall 46 days on sea traveling over 3.800 miles together (>7.000kms), and he knew me for over 3 months by then. He is not the type of guy who is talking BS when it comes to giving advices and surely would not present an idea unless he sees potential, so his words cut sharp in my mind and it kept me thinking for weeks.
I also have to call out, that it was my fault bringing him up first the circumnavigation as an idea. I told him, by age 40, I want to win the Vendee Globe. And fuck, the guy took me serious! Even I didn’t take myself serious. He told, don’t do the Vendee Globe, just do a casual circumnavigation. Per him, the Vendee Globe is hyper-technological rigged race sitting in Formula cars on sea calling it sailing. I have no idea what I should think about it at this point.
Getting in the boat business
Therefore, once we arrived to the island, I had to sit down with myself and think hard, what’s next. Should I continue my journey finding another boat via hitchhiking to Central America mainland, or should I try my chance getting in the boat business learning as much as possible about boats on a fast track?
I was like, ‘Well, what can I lose trying’? So I drafted the below cv and started to go door to door meeting boat suppliers and marine services on the island. I have to call out, that I went in with a hitchhiker mentality with a thick skin on my face not fearing rejection to try my chance and I had a deep belief, that if it’s meant to be, something’s gonna show up soon. Funnily, no one called me stupid or being out of my mind showing around the bio, which also means the island let alone itself is an HQ hub for global boaters. Here, if you share your dream trip of trying to circumnavigate the globe, people will most likely say in a kinda bored way ‘Oh yeah, what are you waiting for?’
After like 3-4 days jamming around the island with my bio, funny things started to happen. I went to a cafe store on the Dutch side and asked the bartender, if she knows any marine service workshops if they look for dayworkers. A lady from behind me overheard my question and turned to me saying ‘well, your man is sitting right there with a cap at the co-working desk, ready to answer all your questions.’ The guy stood up from the desk, he introduced himself and sat down with me giving a 45 minutes detailed speech of all I had to know in terms of the marine business on the island starting from yachting to repair & maintenance stores. ‘You should go to these guys, and ask them. They are bloody pros and they might be in need of a helping hand’ he said. He gave me a list of the workshops I should be hitting up, and off we go! Sometimes you have this feeling, that certain conversations are meant to happen and some people are sent in your way randomly (or not?!) for a reason.
Another couple days have passed, I looked up another few workshops, sent out a few whatsapp notes based on his advise and there we go, soon after, I found a job! I recall the day, when in the morning I was harshly rejected by a boatyard owner and I felt really down. He went hard on me saying ‘You don’t have any tools? Okay, so let’s say, you are an accountant by profession. What sort of an accountant are you, if you don’t have a bloody laptop? How are you supposed to help me, not knowing how to repair things without having any tools? If you cannot help yourself, I cannot help you either.’ I was destroyed in that 5 minutes and was like ‘If I have to run into these type of conversations, I’m done here.’ Then I pulled my sheets together and on the same day later afternoon, I sent out the whatsapp message that landed me on the job I’m having right now. From hell, I went to heaven on the same day.
The working man
The guy who gave me the job is a renown, hard-working handyman for boats on the island. The thing about reputation on a small island as such is, that it’s following you like a shadow. You cannot escape from it. If you work hard, the reward is high because everyone is speaking high of you and you likely end up doing ever prestigious jobs – and trust me here everyone knows everyone. And if you do bad work, well, then you are pretty much done. You are written off, you can go home or try your chance on another island.
There are no magic tricks (at least, there shouldn’t be!) in marine services, because you are indirectly dealing with other people’s lives – and of course, with very expensive toys. It’s in your best interest to get the repairs done at the highest possible quality. And that’s why these services are also margined differently. In general, in the boating industry there is a rule of thumb, that to every cost you can add up an extra 0, and it applies to pretty much everything starting from tools, materials through repair and maintenance costs. It’s not rocket science, but if you think about it, it’s actually somewhere close. The boats have to be sea-ready or in other words ‘shipshape’ when going out on the ocean, which means even some small details have to be pitch-perfect, like rigging quality, osmosis-free hulls, healthy rudder bearings, working technology like AIS, auto-or wind-pilot, etc. Some details are surely more important than others, but in general the elements impacting a boat structure during an ocean crossing in 3-4 weeks can be as heavy as on a lighter sea in 3-4 months.
Most likely, I could have found a digital-nomad job as an accountant paying probably 2-3 times more as I’m earning right now as a boat carpenter assistant, but the intention and the bigger why was clear: get to know everything about boats as fast as possible enabling my mission of getting down to Patagonia with my own boat. As I’m writing this down, this goal seems like moving mountains, because, hey:
- I still cannot sail: crossing an ocean as a crew is nothing comparable to captaining your own boat in ocean conditions, especially at high seas like the southern Pacific.
- I don’t have a sailing boat: boats eat money, and as a risk-averse accountant, I’m having a hard time convincing myself, that it’s the best type of investment; that’s why all boats have a female pronoun, by the way. They take all the money, attention and energy you’ve got and even more lol. I guess this comes from the old times and roles in modern societies have already changed haha so I’ll let you take as much truth out of it as you feel.
- I don’t even know how to get down from here to Patagonia. And surely, if I make it down there, it means I’m most likely already accumulating enough experience on the way, to go even further, BUT ->
- Getting down to Patagonia raises new challenges, because the boat has to be moved from there, which means, a logical next step would be a Pacific crossing; in order to do that, I would need to face Cape Horn or the strait of Magellan, which for even highly seasoned sailors is an extreme challenge due to ever-shifting weather conditions. Cape Horn is a boat graveyard and probably has the worst reputation amongst the Capes around the world.
- I have a mother, whom I would need to present this idea to, without causing her a heart attack or without her trying to telepathically kill me before I could even try my chance (probably this point should have come as the first challenge)
- Have an elderly grandma, who I should be probably just better off visiting more and making proud by settling down, getting married, having kids, rather than selfishly chasing my own dreams, which turn up like mirage from sand, once I’m reaching a certain milestone during this trip.
- Have a big family of father, mother, brother, nephews, nieces, cousins, aunts and in-laws, whom I’m undoubtably putting an extra burden on, by staying away for a long time, not being able to show up during family gatherings, or whenever they need an extra helping hand.
- I would mention here my closer friends too, who by now have probably got used to my silly plans and daydreaming and they luckily give me the time and space to experiment with the BS sticking out of my head. I’m not less their friends sitting here writing this, we are just spread out in space and time. But still, we could definitely meet more, if I would stick around.
On the other hand, one thing is for sure, that on the world at this point, probably there is no better place to be than St Martin / Maarten to achieve this goal. The know-how concentrated on the island in terms of boating is extraordinary and the conversations I’m having on a daily basis with people makes me believe, that I’m on the right track surrounding myself with enablers who turn out to be highly supportive. Sailors love to talk and they only love to be listened more. If you have a drink with them, they can talk for hours and hours about their adventures and that’s a free knowledge exchange process.
Mind the gap
No need to point out, that there is a serious skill, knowledge and financial gap for me to reach the circumnavigation end goal, but apparently, I thought the same thing, when I was drafting down the playbook to cross the Atlantic back in November and fast forward in 4 months, I’m sitting here on the Caribbeans repairing and maintaining boats, with almost 4k nautical miles experience under the belt. It’s not something to show off with, but more to put in context, that what actually now seems hardly possible can become very possible tomorrow with consistent doing and having faith in the process.
Have faith my friend
I have to say, I would be nowhere near, if I would not have put enough faith and trust in the process so far. Last year, going through a break-up, leaving my workplace and selling off all my belongings was a heavy-lift and I could not have done that without actively searching for a higher purpose. At nights, I was stalking through the dark, silent Munich streets alone talking to God for hours like a maniac asking to help me out on this one, because there is no way I can manage it alone. I made some hard decisions and had to bear with their harsh consequences in a way that was worth a closure and not in a mean and bad manner – luckily my parents have already showed me the wrong example of how NOT to split. I cannot speak for others in how the process went or if I have pulled it through successfully, but my conscience is clear. Here I have to give credit to my brother, who stepped in the right and most desperate moment to help me out.
After that, I have realized that I’m looking for support in other bigger plans, such as the Atlantic crossing or the journey down to Patagonia. And I can think bigger and look for challenges where I’m actively seeking God’s help. Goals where I don’t seek it, don’t worth chasing – that’s the decision process I’m following. If I’m seeking help, it means there is something to look out for and keep an open eye and mind on.
I don’t want to go into deep analysis on this topic as my thoughts are tangled and not sure if I could give a straight or even logical explanation of my thinking process, but the foundation of my faith lies somewhere between spiritualism, stoicism, modern neuroscience of how the brain functions and how the subconscious mind works. It would be hypocritical of me starting to preach something, I don’t even know the real depth of – but hey, so far it has helped me out getting through hard things, so why not to continue?! Maybe when it’s time, I’ll give a try to write a separate post on this topic.
That’s the core reason why I’m showing up at church every Sunday morning, to try and reconnect with this higher purpose. If I cannot find it, there is no point for me to waste time here. I can go home, do other more valuable things. But as long as I can keep the wheel spinning, I’ll continue. And that’s the reason why I’m also making a split between what is a purposeful activity and what is not. Getting enough sleep to be sharp next day? Purposeful. Going to work learning more about boats? Purposeful. Listening to sailors about their adventures? Purposeful. Looking for boats on potential sale? Purposeful. Reading books about ocean sailing? Purposeful. Smoking cheap, Colombian coke at 4am from a bar’s toilet? Go home, bro. Visiting other islands for the sake of visiting them? I would love to, but first things first.
The dilemma
There are days where I can clearly see a progress that I’m making to get closer to the possibility of achieving this dream trip, in other days I feel completely powerless and question every step I’m making.
At this point, it’s still just a mere play with the idea of how I could make it possible, but I’m consistently trying to work towards it. If it fails, no hard feelings, then I consider it as it was meant to be failed for something better to show up.
While back in November, I have created this small visual in my head trying to bring sense into crossing the Atlantic without any sailing experience, so I broke the steps down into sub-milestones. I guess I’ll have to do the same thing with this one – if it’s something I’m considering seriously. Scaling a decision from brave – bold towards crazy, the perception is ever-changing through the experience gained by completing the sub-milestones in the process. Surely, sailing across an ocean will always be considered a ballsy act, but it doesn’t have to be a crazy one. So I guess my attempt will be in the upcoming weeks / months to give a try working down this inner-perception scaling more towards brave from crazy.
I could carry on breaking this dilemma down further, but I think by now even my loyal readers have ran out of energy trying to figure out my letters on the above pic, so I’ll stop here.
