About The Journey
Sailing Around The World
"Je quitte l'Europe. L'air marin brûlera mes poumons ; les climats perdus me tanneront."
— Une saison en enfer, Arthur Rimbaud
After my overland crossing of Middle-East and Africa in a modified Dacia Duster, I found myself embarking on a sailboat as a crew from Cape Town to Namibia, and then, from Namibia to Brazil via Sainte-Hélène. I had looked for an opportunity like this to add to my sailing experience as I had in mind to, one day, sail my own boat. This long distance crewing experience adding to my previous sailing lessons done in Brittany, France, with Les Glénans, led me one step further on the path of owning my own sailboat.
However, my extremely long journey across Africa had left me in a difficult mental state and with barely enough savings to buy a seaworthy sailboat. After Brazil, I crossed Venezuela and signed up for a yoga teacher training in the hope that I could make some more money that way. Looking online, I found a cheap sailboat, a Vancouver 27, and flew to Mexico to view it. But something wasn't right, I couldn't take the step and my mental health seemed to get even worse. I had first to take care of my mind and was seriously considering going back to the grind, a more conventional life, at least until I could regenerate. I could make it to a normal job in Switzerland and decided to retire to Poland to start writing a book. I sold what I could and gathered all my remaining savings and lived a few happy months of the Polish summer in Krakow. This period helped me overcome mental challenges and I managed to write about half of the draft of a potential book. More importantly, I made some friends and the social connections I made paired with having my own base, a tiny one room studio in a student residence, helped tremendously with going through this difficult phase.
That's when it came back to me in the form of an email. "Are you still interested in buying my boat?". One of the boat, I had tried to acquire while in the Americas was now for sale again but for a lower price. I didn't have much freedom coins left but I decided to take the leap. I bought the boat, named it Valhalla, and flew to the Carribean to move into my new home
Valhalla at anchor in Pirate's Bay Tobago