Finally the weather calmed enough for me to leave Ijmuiden, granting the first opportunity to dip my toe into the North Sea alone. There was still uncomfortable swell outside of the breakwater, and the wind continuously heavy on the nose, yet Constellation moved slowly toward Den Haag. Four hours into the leg, the already choppy waters became worse, leaving me cold, wet, and having lost what sea legs I had in the placid canals, vomiting over the side of the boat. I tried hard to tack further away from the coastline to increase the water depth and reduce the swell, but it seemed to make little difference. I set back on the original course, increased the RPM’s of ‘August’ the diesel engine, and stood in the cockpit with cold hands, clutching the cabin roof winches, watching Den Haag slowly become larger on the horizon. I left with a favourable tide, meaning I would need to sail in the dark in the last 8nm to port, however the entry lights were relatively easy to pickup, as I watched a large triple masted charter schooner enter first.

Here is a short video made up of terrible clips from my digital camera… It has nothing to do with the work of the DNR-Productions video (you can tell!).

The port of Scheveningin is still a working fishing port, which is nice because the marina is simple and original - So many of the marinas are newly built and highly commercial, so it was nice to be near the North Sea trawlers and be in a harbour with normal boats, instead of being moored up with 62ft Hallberg Rassys, that rarely go outside of the canals. Special thanks to Mira for having an address for me to forward mail to, as well as for the extra funds and vitamins to fight off scurvy!

I left Scheveningin for Stellandam, with my plan to re-enter the canal system due to poor weather over the following few days. It seemed I could sit in a marina waiting for the right weather, or I could just keep moving regardless through the canals - The choice was simple. I sat at anchor in Stellandam after a beautiful day of sailing with all the canvas up with sunny weather.

I successfully made it past Europort, which I think may be the busiest port in the world - I radioed for permission to cross, and was radioed back with confirmation, and then radioed again 30mins later stating that I was making slow progress! After passing through, I made a tack back towards the separation scheme, which Europort control was not particularly happy about, being told in a friendly manner that I should probably change tack relatively soon.

Picking up the channel into Stellandam, I was approached by Dutch Customs. They boarded Constellation, checked my paperwork (bill of sale, SSR, diesel purchase receipts, radio call sign and passports) and searched the boat. They asked where I was going, and I said ‘Australia’ with a straight face, and they didn’t seem particularly suprised, which I thought amusing - One of them simply asked which route I was taking. Having finished up, the speed boat returned to pick up the two Customs officers, and bumped the toe rail of Constellation fairly hard - I am now annoyed to see half of the rail is now disconnected from the hull, meaning I will need to remove it all, epoxy the screw holes and re-mount it. Not only that, but the officers insist on wearing big black boots, therefore putting dark scuff marks all over my deck! Constellation is not exactly in the best cosmetic condition, but black marks and broken toe rails certainly don’t help…

From Stellandam I battled Force 6 winds, fog, minimal visibility and rain to Willemstad, a curious little town shaped like a star (click here for evidence!). The town was heavily fortified, however I’m not entirely sure of it’s true history as all the information and museum displays were in Dutch…

As of today, I’m sitting in a harbour in Bruinisse, about to leave for Vlissingen. By the weekend I will be back in the North Sea, which will quickly turn into the Dover Straight, and then finally the English channel. I’m considering going on an extra long tack to Dover to fill up my gas tanks, and then tacking back to France - We’ll see how the winds are.

nick.

The beginning of this is going to read a little like an Oscars speech, but really, I wouldn’t be here without all the help I’ve found along the way…

I’m immensely humbled right now by the generosity of friends, new and old. People are supporting me in so many ways, through sending me money so I can actually start the trip, to feeding and welcoming me into their homes. Thank you to the generosity of David Watts, someone whom I have never met in person who generously sent funds to keep me on the move. Big thanks Tracy for sending funds live from New York city - Guess who’s getting married?! Thank you to Aaron for sending me money to sort out the stove situation, by extracting funds out of his Dubai relocation package no less! Gigantic thank you to new friends-in-person, Paul, Lisa (I’ve been wearing the Fladen suit already!) Lonneke and Peter for absolutely everything. Thank you to Mum & Dad for the SSB receiver so I can check the weather and listen to the BBC - I know you hate the idea of my trip, but I promise to only sail in 2ft swells, sunny conditions and 11kts of wind. And of course, thank you to all the ‘early adopters‘ who actually believed my ridiculous idea was for real from the beginning.

So, here I am… In June, 2006, I hitch hiked across Sweden into Norway, and saw the beautiful Fjords. I decided there that sailing would be the only true way to travel - It is one of the only ways left where travel can still be adventure, freedom and true exploration. In July, 2006 I researched boats and emailed brokers, and by August ‘Constellation’ was part of a hairy monthly payment plan. I worked for fly-by-night companies, friends and even behind a bar. I had grand plans of satellite connections, digital navigation and summer sailing - I never really achieved any of those things, but I do have the necessities. I’m not leaving as I had planned, with money in the bank and good conditions, so for now this trip is going to be more of a ‘work yourself home’ thing, than a non-stop sailing adventure which is funded by a decent savings plan. I could have stayed and worked another year to achieve that, but I made the decision that to at least begin, and see how far I get was more important.

Two days ago I left Monnikendam on a non-descript Monday. It was raining, I had my last coffee with the very kind Harbour Master, and left. It was an odd feeling to think I was departing on this great trip, and all it really consisted of was me backing out of my berth and disappearing into the Markemeer, back towards Amsterdam. I engaged the windvane self-steering for the first time, and she steered a perfect course, to my amazement; not that I didn’t think it was going to work, but I’d just never used one before. It rained heavily all the way, and I ended up sitting in front of a large bridge for two hours waiting for it to open. Eventually it opened at 6pm, and I contended with another lock full of charter boats. I was nervous about crashing around in the lock to such a large audience, as everyone looks at me alone in such a small boat with the British flag… Luckily my lock maneuvers are well rehearsed - I came in gracefully, and watched some Belgians smash their pushpit against the wall to the amusement of the barge charter crew. Through Amsterdam city it rained gallons, and I sang to myself like a man with early onset madness. I was so happy to be going somewhere, and it was an exceptional feeling sailing through such a large historic city like Amsterdam, on route to the other side of the world.

Darkness came, and I motored through the North Sea canal towards the coastline. Through the other side of my final lock, I could feel the swell already, and as I motored on past the last industrial area, it became suddenly pitch black, except for a few navigation lights. I managed with a headlight torch and the Reeds Almanac on the cockpit seat to find the marina mini-channel, and I finally berthed at 12am.

I woke up at 5am to enormous winds, as Constellation was locked against the pontoon by the gusts. I sat in bed thinking that I wouldn’t be going anywhere that day… It was a favourable Northerly wind, which is becoming increasingly rare, as the winds have changed already to predominantly South, yet it was too strong with a large swell. I sat in the marina confident the next day would yield something more sailable. I defiantly left at 10am with a fairly brisk Southerly wind, and exited the Ijmuiden breakwater. To my shock, the swell was enormous. A 36ft Bavaria yacht came up from behind, being thrown around like a rag-doll. They looked at me quizzically and motored on. My little 10hp diesel was doing 1.2kts against a headwind and 4m swell. I battled to raise the mainsail and began heading towards Den Haag (The Hague). The sail increased stability slightly, but moving South with the swell coming from a South Westerly direction proved impossible - I neared broaching still running at 1-2kts of speed. The windvane was struggling to steer a course, because the freshly made knots in the steering lines had tightened up, therefore putting too much slack on the tiller. I eventually gave up after spending two hours just getting 1.5nm off the breakwater. Turning around I was back into less choppy waters within 15minutes, doing 7kts under a second reefed mainsail. I was annoyed returning, but I’ve vowed to sail conservatively, to conserve myself and the boat - I have nothing much to prove on the front of small boat heavy weather sailing, and the less I break on the boat, the less money I have to spend, and the further I can go.

I don’t like the North Sea at all, and would never wish upon anyone to have to sail it in a small vessel. Today it is a small ships warning, with some kind of front moving down from Germany. Tomorrow does not look much better, however Saturday may be the one I can finally move on. I can see at this rate, it will take me a very long time to progress South. My primary aim right now is to just get out of Northern Europe ASAP, yet with this weather, which seems like an early winter, I may spend considerable time wasting away in marinas…! At least I will finally get to finish Moby Dick.

nick.

Gigantic thanks to Ash & Tana from Melbourne, for sending through additional funds in my time of great need. I have such generous friends helping me behind all this, it’s simply amazing!

I’ve been waiting here in Monnikendam for the past two weeks - I left England around the 6th of August, and have unexpectedly spent what must be the best part of a month in Holland. The town of Monnikendam is incredibly quaint. As you walk down the small streets, there are chickens in the bushes, cyclists peddling past, the smell of smoke from the eel houses, and beautiful 100 year old original sailing barges moored up alongside - I swear on my life, I saw a man with a bicycle, holding a chicken under one arm and wearing yellow wooden clogs. Holland is great.

Constellation is coming together in terms of preparedness. The self-draining cockpit issue which has been a downer on me since I bought the boat, has been more or less solved for the immediate future. The floor really needs to be raised to fix it properly, but I’ve made some arrangements as a secondary measure, and I think it will suffice. I’ve also finally fixed the mainsheet connection to the boom, which tore off because of a destructive Chinese jybe - I never did find the special sliders, but again, I swapped some things around, re-riveted a few bits, and presto, it’s back. The spreaders have also been giving me stress, by dropping down after load has been put on the rig. It turns out when the mast was put up, the spreaders were not angled upwards slightly and tensioned correctly, which meant pressure on the rig would eventually loosen the lee spreader.

My final dilemma is that of the stove situation, because again I’ve been forced into heating food with tea-light candles, after finding my British gas tanks cannot be re-filled in Europe. It’s going to set me back 100euros for a new tank and regulator, and I just can’t bring myself to do it. For all I know, Portugal will have yet another standard to conform to. Oh what I wouldn’t do for a multi-fuel liquid stove…

The windvane (think of a wind powered auto-pilot) from Windpilot arrived last Friday, and it is proving to be the nicest piece of equipment on the boat. The engineering and quality of it is beautiful, and it’s a shame Constellation has a transom mounted rudder, because it means the Windpilot (I’ve yet to give it a name) will need to be mounted off of a custom stainless bracket. I’ve spent a a lot of time designing and r trying desperately to remember back to high school art classes in perspective drawing to create something that made sense. I eventually scribbled together a napkin blueprint, which the workshop seemed to understand. For some strange reason, the engineers kept insisting on speaking Dutch back to me, even though it was clear I had no idea what they were saying. When pressed they’d revert to English, but it turned into an amusing conversation after this repeated for about half an hour. I can’t work out whether it was forced learning, or if they thought I was faking my lack of linguistic flair - Either way, the bracket will be finished on Friday lunchtime, and I hope I can get it mounted by nightfall.

Which means, I’ll be leaving this weekend. (Weather pending).

Ohhh boy.

nick.

I’m back in The Netherlands after my short sojourn in Berlin. It was nice to see everyone and say goodbye, and in a sense also hard to leave - Living in Berlin was not always easy, but I had built up a network of friends, and over the past year and a half it’s been the closest thing to home.

I arrived at 5:30am in Amsterdam, slept for most of the day, paid to stay for another night and left on Sunday with my new found Swedish friends Paul and Lisa to Monnickendam, a four hour motor north in the Markermeer. It wasn’t without mishap when my engine overheated, which I suspect was caused by a blockage in the cooling system from the day of motoring through green algae on the canals. I wasn’t prepared to sail, but Constellation hove-to perfectly under poles which allowed me to get things setup and hank on the foresail. I opened the engine compartment and sailed for a couple of hours, and thankfully the engine was cool enough to motor into the marina.

It’s a very nice marina here, however the primary difference to the Sixhaven, in Amsterdam and here, is that it’s a commercial marina. A lot of marina’s along the canals are actually sailing clubs, so the prices are always cheap. I am currently in negotiations to offer my cleaning services in exchange for a berth, which is actually showing some promise, as I am now playing the waiting game and cannot really move about.

A lot of people have asked why I wanted to go to Hamburg, because if you look at a map, you’ll notice that it’s actually the wrong direction. Back in the heyday of this project, I envisioned I would have more money, more time, and I would have been back in Hamburg in July, and left for Australia soon after. The point of Hamburg was to sail with Johannes, and to also start my trip from Germany. Unfortunately I couldn’t get things together quick enough, and the honest truth was that Hamburg had become the place to sit for winter, therefore delaying my trip by almost a year. I was fixed in my mind there was no other option, which was also why I didn’t mind dawdling in the Dutch canals for so long - It’s almost been a month since I left England.

When I arrived in Rotterdam, I changed plans again: Rotterdam was as nice as city as any, and they had work for English speakers. I was coerced (rather easily, I really wanted to keep sailing!) to move to Amsterdam, where I even went for a job interview. I felt sick at the thought of living as I have for another year, and working at a desk through a cold winter. Amsterdam seemingly had decent work opportunities, and in my head it was the right thing to do - Stay and work. But in my heart, all I’ve wanted to do is keep going.

Thanks to the extreme generosity of my friend Nathan, who called last week out of the blue, I gained some financial hope and decided I could do it. He was sitting in an Internet cafe in Thailand, on his very own holiday, telling me I could do it, and what was my bank account number, because he was going to send some money through. I couldn’t believe my luck, because his call was on the deepest day of my depression over the whole situation - I couldn’t leave the cabin of the boat, and I stopped answering pestering calls from recruiters. One of the pieces of equipment I required was self-steering - There was absolutely no way I could sail singlehanded without some kind of steering equipment. How would I go down below to navigate, to sleep, and to eat? I decided I would simply buy an electronic tiller pilot and leave.

Later in the day, I told my friend Marty, who is both a good friend and also a business partner - Together we run Serversaurus.com, yet the reality is, I’m always flittering about, and he does all the work. Already Marty has donated personal funds to this mad project, and once he heard I was leaving, he decided Serversaurus.com should sponsor me, and promptly sent the funds to purchase an EPIRB, which is now hopefully on route in the mail.

I also must thank Paul and Lisa, who donated the inverter which is now powering my laptop to make this post. Soon to be world sailors themselves, they’ve taken me out for drinks, fed me dinner and been great company while in Holland. For my Amsterdam stay, thank you also to Peter, a fellow sailor who has helped me out with transport cards, dinner, beer, a place to send mail, and incredible hospitality. The Netherlands has been very good to me.

Back on to technical matters, I’ve been trying to decide over the past week about which tillerpilot to buy, and the reality is, I might get a ways down the coast on it, but it’s not a viable solution in the long run. So I’ve gone out and sold my final valuable asset, which I have been avoiding for an exceptionally long time: My beloved camera. At the end of the day, it is a replaceable object, and in a sense, this project isn’t - It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity, with enormous amounts of energy behind it.

With some help from Peter at Windpilot, I have purchased a Windvane for Constellation. I have been pestering Peter for almost a year about Windvanes, and finally something has happened. It has taken almost every last Euro I have, and dealing with the cost of having a stainless mounting bracket made for the transom, I will almost completely deplete my remaining funds. I have nothing left to sell, and no hidden stores of money… I’ll be leaving with a fully equipped boat, and literally not a penny! But the moral of the story is, I’m going, and that’s all that matters. If you live in Holland, and can tig weld, I need you!

Time is now of the essence, the trees are beginning to change colour, the mornings are definitely colder, and I still need to barrel back down the North Sea to wait for a weather window for Biscay, who’s ideal crossing period was at least a month ago. It’s through the generosity of long time friends and new ones, that has meant I will actually be departing. Thank you all.

nick