Rewind: A Sailing Adventure

By Vanessa Johnen and Franz-Xaver Neubert

Tired of the 9-5? You're not alone. The daily grind of office life has left many of us dreaming of escape, of swapping our corporate life for one of adventure and freedom. 

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Blackheath Publishing
• Release date: Jan 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9783950517057

Book preview

Title Page: REWIND

Copyright © 2024 Blackheath Publishing

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-3-9505170-5-7

Cover design by: Blackheath Publishing Design

Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than the things you did do. So, throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Mark Twain

This book was inspired by an original live forecast and blog, which can be viewed here: https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/REWIND/

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword

Prologue

Part I: The Start of an Adventure

Part II: Setting off into the Blue – West-bound Atlantic Crossing

Part III: Three Months in Paradise – Exploring the Caribbean Islands

Part IV: A Long Way Home – East-bound Atlantic Crossing

Part V: An Ocean of Memories

Epilogue

About the Authors

FOREWORD

Jovina Choo OLY

Double Southeast Asian Games Gold Medallist, Asian Sailing Champion, Singaporean Olympian in the 470 class (Rio 2016).

When I was first told of a story about a husband-and-wife team, with PhDs in Neuroscience, who were embarking on a journey to sail across the Atlantic Ocean, I was intrigued. They have subsequently chronicled their remarkable adventure in this book. A number of years ago when I was a 17-year-old national sailor competing at an international competition, I was asked in an interview what my sailing aspirations were. They probably expected an answer like going to the Olympics. Instead, my reply was to sail around the world. Funnily enough, I have achieved the former and not the latter.

Having been an Olympic sailor who spent many years sailing in the seas and open waters, I know all too well what it means to be at the mercy of mother nature. In my sailing career, I’ve sailed through many storms, but I have only ever done inshore racing, which meant I never strayed too far from the coast - it was always within sight. When my 17-year-old self made that statement, I did not realise then how challenging it is to sail around the world. The adult me (now twice that age) does and still has yet to venture on a sail far enough where I lose sight of the coast.

It is why I know how daunting an undertaking it is to achieve an Atlantic crossing. When you are in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the closest land in any direction is over a thousand nautical miles away (that’s about the two times the width of Germany - where the authors are from). Offshore or blue water sailing is a dance with the elements—the wind, the waves, and the ever-changing moods of the sea and skies. It demands a profound connection with the ocean, an intimate understanding of one's vessel, and an unwavering determination to face whatever challenges may arise. It is a pursuit that transcends the boundaries of the sport itself, weaving a tapestry of human experience, adventure, and self-discovery.

In the pages that follow, Vanessa and Franz have divided up their narrative into five parts with golden gems of wisdom and insights littered throughout the book. Part 1 tells of the immense planning and preparation required even before starting the journey. Part 2 chronicles the literal and figurative highs and lows of the ocean crossing. Part 3 journals their adventures island-hopping in the Caribbean and Part 4 records their return across the Atlantic, back to their home port in Europe. Part 5 concludes as a reflection.

Here is my own reflection. Sailing, like life, is a journey into the unknown. It teaches us the value of adaptability, the importance of resilience, and the beauty of simplicity. It is in this humility in the vastness that teaches us to relish in the richness of the here and now, and to embrace the subtle symphony of life's little joys that we see exemplified in this book.

As you embark on this literary voyage, may you feel the salt spray on your face, hear the creaking of the hull, and sense the vastness of the Atlantic stretching before you. I hope that you will gain a deeper appreciation for the sublime beauty and relentless power of the ocean, and perhaps, like me, you will be encouraged to tackle your own proverbial ocean, whatever that may be.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, we would like to thank our families who have always supported our craving for freedom. They helped us navigate territories that were completely unchartered to themselves and endowed us with their trust and support that only parents and grandparents can provide. Without their love, we would never have grown the confidence that is necessary to venture into the unknown. There is a bond beyond satellite phone emails and calls that ties us irrevocably to them all – including both our siblings and my uncle.

Special thanks go to our sailing mentors Peter and Hubert who expertly advised us on all aspects from upgrading and maintaining our boat to weather routing. They covered our helpline for possible ad hoc questions from the ocean. And most importantly, they always maintained a light-hearted spirit.

We want to acknowledge our dear friends without whose requests for regular updates, the initial blog would never have been written. And writing this blog gave us more than we expected, this is We write to make sense of it all (Wallace Stegner).

Last but not least, we want to thank our editor and publisher Elesa Zehndorfer who encouraged us to turn our captain’s log into a book. She insisted that this adventure must be shared and that it might inspire others to cast off their lines – this notion became a great source of impetus for this work. Whilst becoming authors was a new venture, we are truly thankful to have such an experienced helmswoman steering us through the depths of writing and publishing.

DEDICATION

To my loving grandma, who encouraged me to push my boundaries and always said you should write a book about your life one day.

To my parents, who always encouraged me to do whatever I wanted, without doubting whether it could be done.

PROLOGUE

December 4th, 2021: Puerto Calero, Lanzarote, Spain

[28° 55’N, 013° 42’W]

Adventure in our heart and a longlist of preparations in our hand

(Franz’s log entry)

I was 27 years old when he first set foot on a sailing boat. The yacht club of our alma mater, the University of Oxford, held an Extravaganza event every fall, shortly after the first term of the academic year – the Michaelmas term – had started. This event usually constituted a one weekend-long cruising trip on the English south coast, that newbies (such as myself) could join. Experiencing the trip alongside more seasoned sailors and the university Blues Sailing Team offered a great opportunity to find out whether they had sea legs or not!

Sometimes, more than ten boats left Port Solent, each with a crew of eight sailors, sailing for Cowes, Yarmouth, or other places on the Isle of Wight. It was on this very trip that I not only earned my very first miles of sailing experience, but also met my future wife, Vanessa.

Vanessa had learned sailing years ago as a teenager, first on the Ijsselmeer, a closed off inland bay in the central Netherlands, sailing on platbodem-schips (flat bottom ships). Later, in the Baltic Bay, she would go on to obtain her coastal skipper license sailing on the 29-foot Jeanneau Sun. Freedom-loving Vanessa put to sea for her first Atlantic crossing at the young age of 24 when she crewed on a 45-foot sailing boat – kindly supported by a Youth Bursary of the Ocean Cruising Club (OCC). At university, Vanessa had been the captain of the sailing team for two years, and in the annual Varsity competition, she had captained her team to victory over Cambridge. Twice.

I took up sailing more seriously the following years, joining some offshore cruises across the English Channel and along the south coast. Whenever there were open spots, I joined the university sailing team for some inshore or even offshore regattas organized by the Junior Offshore Group (JOG) or the Royal Ocean Racing Club (RORC). I also completed a few RYA sailing courses and was then delighted to join friends to sail on their 40-year-old Contessa 34 around Britain, for a few legs in the Irish Sea and later up towards Yorkshire, Northumberland, and Scotland.

During these happy years of sailing, we were also engaged as laboratory scientists. We were studying the human brain, how our minds are shaped by our environments. Most people these days have heard a little about brain plasticity – how, for example, blind or deaf people might learn to see and hear again through other senses - such as tactile input through the tongue, linked to a small camera located in their glasses. Or how a stroke patient with a paralyzed hand can regain hand movement after diligent training; not because tissue in the brain recovers from the damage (it does not), but because the brain rewires itself and learns to move the damaged hand with other areas of the brain. This way, people can learn – with so called brain computer interfaces – how to control a third robotic arm or a cursor on the screen.

Many scientific experiments and research reports later, we both graduated with a PhD in our pockets and joined different management consulting firms. We had decided that consulting could offer a great opportunity to experience real life outside the ivory tower of science. And it did! We quickly received a crash course in structured thinking, prioritization, 80-20 working and in experiencing our own limits of what our bodies and minds were capable of delivering and enduring.

We entered a world of large factory floors and board rooms, seeing senior operations from the inside, bold decisions being taken, visions being realized. And, sadly, more than a few high hopes crushed. Such is life – and business. We became accustomed to a life of rushing through dozens of fast-paced projects, successfully climbing the hierarchical ladder of our respective firms. It was a whirlwind, for most of the years that followed, and often fulfilling.

However, by the time Covid-19 struck in early 2020, we had already considered the idea of taking a pause - a sabbatical from work, perhaps, so that we could embark on a longer sailing trip than we had ever experienced before.

As fate would have it, only a few months before we had bought a 38-foot Dufour Grand Large second hand from an Italian owner in Malta. Although it was not at all equipped for long distance ocean sailing, we figured we could make it suitable for our plans (which were, at that time, admittedly still quite vague!). We had already sailed REWIND – a boat named after the previous owners’ favourite song by Vasco Rossi – from Malta to Sicily, Sardinia, the Baleares and all the way to Andalucía.

Through much of 2020 and several lockdowns, we were dismayed to learn that we could not easily visit her. So instead, we hatched plans of how to sail away. Years of professional theorizing and planning followed by testing and refining had taught us to explore the unknown in