Inexperienced Dutch backpackers buy a sailboat to escape from Australia

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Dutchman Jordy van der Voort and compatriot Daniel Wiessing are preparing to sailcfrom Australia to the Netherlands, a 13,000 nautical miles journey, but first, they are ironing out a few issues one of which is that neither man has much sailing experience.

29-year-old Jordy van der Voort has the boat. He sold his backpacker truck last week and bought Samara, a 47 footer ferrocement ketch, for a good price. He is Dutch, after all.

He knew he couldn’t sail the boat on his own and the very next day after his purchase, by pure coincidence, 23- year-old Daniel Wiessing put out feelers on a Dutch backpacker Facebook page to see if there was any interest in sailing back to Amsterdam in a not-yet-purchased "corona-free catamaran".

There was, of course, a lot of interest.

Requests came from fellow Dutch backpackers from all over Australia who said they wanted to join Mr Wiessing on his trip to the Netherlands, "especially because it is so hard to get a plane ticket at the moment".

The boat will have some dangerous waters to cross, such as the Gulf of Aden where pirates may be looking for bounty, but the captains are not worried.

“We have nothing of value that can be stolen.”

But the bigger issue is that there are really only two sailing routes to the Northern Hemisphere; via the Panama canal and other via the Suez Canal, and both are seasonal.

They hope to be ready to leave in about a month aiming for the Panama Canal option, all going well.

If not, they'll have to wait six months for the Suez Canal opportunity. And everything depends on the developments around the coronavirus.

Mr Wiessing says the most attractive thing about the voyage is also the thing that he fears most: “total isolation from the rest of the world”.

In any case, they are going to stock up on canned food and rum because: “beer takes up a lot of room”, and they are going to take turns steering Samara. 

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