The Plan

It's not that much of a Grand Plan really. It is more a mix of planning, ideas and dreams. But with a touch of reality to it.

One thing we know already from experience: too much planning simply exports the daily stress. We will rather look outside from time to time to see in which direction the wind blows.

The planning is to stop working on 01.mai.2002 and move onto Grote Beer. For the already mentioned undefined period. 10 years or so. Or more, or less.

And in those years we want to visit and see a number of places that we regard interesting in this world. Not a planned circumnavigation, or maybe in the end it will be one. Time will show.

The only fixed plan is the first summer. We plan to spend this summer in the Baltic. The western shore we already know well, now we would like to visit the eastern shores and visit countries like Finland, maybe St.Petersburg, the Baltic states, and Poland. We're not even sure yet whether we plan to spend one summer there, or two.

Very probably we will stay over the winter in the north of Holland. This is what we installed our good heaters for.

For the year 2003 the planning already becomes very vague. Maybe back to the Baltic, or into another area which we find very attractive as long as our bones stand the cold weather. The area of the Shetlands, Faroer and Iceland. Maybe with a detour around Ireland on the way back into warmer waters.

And from there on the planning completely stops. Only the ideas and dreams remain. There are a few other places we'd like to go, like North Africa. For us a very foreign area with very foreign cultures. Some of the countries will prove more attractive than others. Tunisia might be nice to have a look at, without getting into the bulk of tourists that is travelling in the Med.

A boyhood dream of mine is Tristan da Cunha, a solitary volcano island, halfway between Cape Town and South America. Boyhood dream because my parents had a book on the trip of the Dutch submarine KXVIII that visited the island in 1935. The pictures always attracted me.

The next dream further South. The Falklands and Strait Magallaes with Patagonia. Whether we will ever get there? No idea.

One country which we both would like to go is Indonesia. Maybe at the moment a politically unsound idea, but in the years to come a lot of things will change. The dream of the many island. But it may well be, that on our way we meet so many beautiful and warm islands that our route takes us into an entirely other direction.

One of the things we would like to do is sail under the Golden Gate.

An other place we would like to visit is the US east coast. The New England states with their beautiful Autumns and the many harbours with good looking sailboats which are typical for the area. Maybe a place to stay over winter.