How it all started…

Jurre and I, Suzanne, had our first date on a sailboat. During that first date, Jurre shared his dream about sailing the world. Solo. I immediately thought to myself: I’ll join. And actually, I said that out loud πŸ˜† and that’s where our shared dream started.

We sailed a lot over the past few years with the beautiful boat of Jurre’s parents. A big thank you for all the times that we could sail away with the Witte Zwaan! I learned so much about sailing. What struck me most, is the instant chill-ness once you enter a sailboat. Being on the water, in such a cosy, tiny space, really brought so much peace of mind. We enjoyed ourselves so much once we were aboard. Sailing, but also the slow and simple lifestyle: doing games, reading, having breakfast. Such a pleasure!

Entering a sailboat results in instant chill-ness

A few years went by and we didn’t speak much about our sailing dream. We thought it would be impossible to ever own a boat. Jurre looked into bigger boats on which we would be able to host guests. But I wasn’t too keen on having to work about 50% during our sailing trip. And as much as I like having friends and family over, I really like to have my own space πŸ˜‡

And then this happened: Jurre asked me to marry him! 😍YAY! So excited! And as we were thinking about the wedding – and the savings – our sailing dream popped up again. If we were going to safe up all that money… shouldn’t we try to make our sailing dream come true?

So we started a new search for boats. We adjusted our requirements and we saw which boats would be within our budget. Older boats, steel, a bit smaller… we looked at many websites, going through them every night to see the new additions. We also looked on Marktplaats, a Dutch Ebay-kinda site for basically everything… and also yachts!

Realizing dreams by adjusting some requirements… that’s how we managed to find our dreamboat.

We did not expect to find anything on there, we always thought such valuable items would only be sold via an agent. But, you’ll probably get where this story is going: we found our dreamboat on Marktplaats. Located in Vlissingen, about 2.5 hours from Amsterdam. We spent several weeks emailing before we could finally visit her. And when we did so, we fell in love immediately. She’s big, rough, old, a bit rusty but very spacious and solid. Exactly what we wanted for our journey.

After two viewings, we decided to go for it. There was a bit of time pressure due to the previous owner leaving the country. It was one of those rare moments when you mainly just have to trust your gut feel. I guess that’s always the case with buying boats: you just fall in love. If you ever start doing the total math, or if you know in full detail about all the things that you’ll encounter, you’ll never buy one πŸ™‰ So far, the boat did cost us a lot more than expected. And there were also many more repairs to be done than expected. In Dutch, there is this saying ‘koop een boot en werk je dood’, which translates to ‘buy a boat, and you’ll work your ass off until you die’. Not very positive… but I guess when you’re working on your dream, no mountain is high enough to keep you from reaching your goal. But yeah… we had quite some setbacks. More on that in another blog, let’s keep this one pure with our initial enthusiasm πŸ˜‰