In De Buurt

Does a 134ft aluminium hull Superyacht fit in the frigid canals of Amsterdam? No. So what on earth am I doing sitting in the middle of Vondelpark while typing this entry? This is where the unique nature of this job comes into play.. The stories one hears about the absurd lengths crew go to while attempting to satisfy guests and owners are plentiful, some of them will leave a bitter taste in your mouth and could give a momentary misanthropic complex. Thankfully this is not one of them.

As I mentioned in my last post, our babystay popped off from the caps after rusting through and sheering itself to death. The structural integrity of the mast depends on all it's components working in unison. The baby stay will not actually be used because we don't have the sail that attaches to it, but doing 13,000 sea miles in some of the most aggressive and unpredictable navigable waters in the world with a handicapped rig is not on the agenda. So, Mike had to order a new one to be made ASAP, the only catch is that no amount of money thrown at it would make it arrive to Tenerife from Holland on time, and we have a passage plan to stick to. That's where I come in, flying from Tenerife to Amsterdam (5 hour trip) to pick up the new stay and back again in 24 hours..it will certainly look good on my CV when applying for a job with DHL. Joking aside, it was nice to be back in Amsterdam. The architecture is stunning, seemingly frozen in time, and freezing in general!

I only had an hour or two to walk around the city before going back to my hotel to catch the couple of hours of sleep available to me before my flight. It was a good perspective to absorb before heading off to a watery social obscurity. We are social creatures, being around people feels somewhat safe and comforting. Even though social conditioning makes us hesitant to just approach each other in the street and strike up a conversation about life and love and everything in between, from our stone age caves caves to our sprawling cities there is peace to be found in the social chaos. What the concrete and infrastructure don't provide us with is the galactic perspective, which is what we are going to be subjected to imminently, and oh how excited I am. City lights drown out our spacial view, looking up at the milky way in all it's majesty with shooting stars blasting across the sky every minute is humbling, it's an important reminder of so many things, things that I'm not mentally equipped enough to even materialise in to words, mostly because they are raw feelings of eternal infinity and momentary awareness all at the same time.

Anyway enough drivel, I'm on the way back to the boat package in hand. Back to work before the big crossing!!

Fleet