Fellow sufferers

…For most that went to sea, there must have been a reason.
Adventure, ideal or just for fun: work is work.
It was mainly the adventure that appealed to me, and as a child, I thought it was incredibly cool to be allowed to sail on such a sea tug.

You did not have friends on board, just fellow sufferers.
Men who, in a nutshell, were stuck together for months and could work together.
Sailors of all kinds.

I sailed with a mate that wanted to sail on all kinds of ships.
His ideal was to sail once on a whaler.

Whaler ‘Willem Barendsz’.

Or with a chief engineer who managed to turn a cold store into a freezer cell and made even more strange inventions, so that the equipment in the engine room no longer turned properly.
He was understandably called ‘Gyro Gearloose’ and nobody knew his actual name.
The cook was not happy with that, he kept carrying his things back and forth.
Sometimes he founds engine parts in it that needed to be cold, while the other half were heating up on his stove.

Or with a driver who dreamed of owning his own ship one day and was therefore already probing here and there for a crew.

Konvooi.

With an oilman who had still sailed on Murmansk.
Who, when he had a drink too much, relive the horrors again.
In the intoxication of two huts he made one.

With sparks who already became seasick when they got on board.

A sailor who actually made a little boat inside a whisky bottle, for whom I had to write love letters to his beloved in Malta.

Seafarers who only wanted to sail on one specific ship.
They were in love with that ship and considered it their home.
They felt displaced when they went on leave.

Then there were sailors who only wanted to work at night.

I pasted and painted a model of my floating love.

Wrote many stories about it and am still looking for images of her.

The ‘Utrecht’ in her element.

A sailor who tattooed the entire little ship with a simple doorbell equipped with needles.
You couldn’t imagine anything too strange; he would prick it into your skin.
It did cost quite a bit of beer!

A sailor had to console himself a bit to find his happiness.