Monday, July 28, 2014
Wednesday, July 09, 2014
This short promotional video will be shown at the press conference in Taipei
when Yeh Liping’s book about our eight-year-circumnavigation comes out end of
July or beginning of August.
http://youtu.be/saKWtyq8z6g 大海 - The Sea
- Das Meer
Friday, April 18, 2014
Happy Easter!
Hi guys,
How is it going? Any special plans for the not too distant future?
Life in Frörup/Oeversee is OK so far. Still have a screwed up right eye from the brain tumor operation and have to take artificial tears every two hours and sleep with a watchglass bandage at night. Doc says that might be over in a year while my speech therapist is of the opinion that it might stay for good. Right ear is deaf for good and the sense of balance, too. Still, after the operation they told me that 2/3 of people never walk again.
Here at home we have renovated the basement, where Aurora's room and my study are located. We even got some furniture now, so that we can eat at a proper table and so on. Except for the usual Jacobsen-chaos it looks almost normal here now. The new company is a different story. The software I am renting is so complex that I am completely at a loss. I've had to hire programmers twice already and the user manual is about 6000 pages and worked on by a team continuously. Because of competition at eBay we can't set the prices we would like so that the profit margin is minimal. We don't have the same problem at Amazon, but there the financial barriers of entry were quite a bit steeper and the commissions are a lot higher, too. Dunno how all that will play our in the long run. Also, I haven't quite decided whether I prefer to scrape barnacles of my boat every two weeks or mow the lawn. <grin>
Gloria is teaching Mandarin Chinese at a local school and her book will be published this summer with major to do, press conference and all. The publisher is one of the biggest in Taiwan and most of Gloria's favorite authors are published there, too. The book will be a large format hard-cover with hundreds of photographs in it. Should work out pretty well although we don't hold our breath as to the advance and royalties.
Aurora is now the best in her class in almost every subject. In August she will go to high-school and fortunately she got accepted in the one of our choice. There she'll be able to learn Spanish as her "official" second foreign language the year after and also she'll be in the violin workgroup, although violin is not her instrument of first choice. Shortly before or after the summer vacation she will be invited to go to Berlin to a TV studio, where they will record a session in "Klein gegen Groß", where kids have to compete against adults in a previously agreed field. This wasn't our idea at all, but that of the director who had seen her in a video made by camerawoman Christine Schmitthenner in order to apply for a job. At first I seriously thought this was only an April Fools' joke.
Our two purebred cats continue to give us lots of joy. Schnurri is a "blue" British Shorthair tom who will turn one year old in June. Puschel is a two year old Maine Coon, which is nothing short of amazing. Had I known what these Coonies are like, I would have had one a lot earlier. She follows me absolutely everywhere trying to show her affection. These big cats can walk on snow without sinking in because of the fur between their toes, were used as hunting cats in North America, love to swim and can survive in up to -22°F. Usually both of these breeds carry a steep price, but it was not so in our case. We only paid a nominal fee, because Schnurri was desperately shy and people didn't want that. So the breeder couldn't sell him. Puschel was originally used for breeding, but as the only remaining tom was her father and the breeder didn't want another one, she decided to sell her. But almost everybody only wants a cute little kitten. Their loss was our luck. Recently Puschel gave us a lot of excitement with a false pregnancy. It was really hard to believe how many people wanted one of the kittens.
As you can see, even on land boredom is not one of our problems. We even got used to the cold and the climate in general in no time.
So, now your are again reasonably up to date on us. : – )
Cheers!
Aurora, Liping & Holger
Bingos-Tonstudio.de - Holger Jacobsen - Quellenweg 2, 24988 Oeversee, Germany
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Dear Friends,
We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
The year 2013 brought great changes with it. Last Christmas we were on the hard at Powerboats in Trinidad, where we celebrated Christmas, Aurora Ulani's 9th birthday and New Years Eve. Just a few days later we were back in the water, checked out the Carnival and the beginning of spring brought us north to Bequia Race Week and many friends. When that was over, we sailed on to Martinique to visit our old friends Karl & Libu on ROSINANTE. With other friends we parted ways or had to leave them behind. The latter because of a horrendous speedboat accident near Hog Island (Grenada) and the former because the call of the arctic proved irresistible. So we don't know when we will see Max and Sandy on VOLO and Doug and Jill on COMPAÑERA again in the near future.
I have known Karl & Libu since 1989 in Kourou (French Guyana) and we met them again in Trinidad before our circumnavigation. It was marvelous to visit them again! As usual, the food was excellent, the conversation as well and everything else was perfect, too. As my father turned 80 on 15 May, we left our boat in Karl & Libu's care and flew to participate in the festivities. That is very easy from Martinique, as it is officially part of Europe and Gloria would not have any visa hassles that way.
The principal of the elementary school in the village where I grew up was very agreeable and allowed our daughter to test the varying age groups and grades while we were there. That all went very well and we decided to let her join the 4th grade on 5 August. The countdown was on. It wasn't only the school, but selling the boat also suddenly became a real option. While we were in Germany Günter and his son had a look at our boat several times and they liked what they saw. Soon Günter and Yvette from about 1 1/2 hours by car away visited us in our home in Oeversee and from then on everything was a joint project.
Back in Martinique we were working on the boat as usual and subsequently sailed it back to Trinidad. Max & Sandy on VOLO were still there and Max made me a *big* birthday present by fixing the saildrive. Thank you, Max! Günter & Yvette stayed on board with us for a week and we came to an agreement. That meant no more Scotland Bay, howler monkeys and jungle. We had decidedly mixed feelings when we had to say good bye to eight years (or 25 years if you count the previous two DHARMA BUMs) of yachtie-life. Unfortunately we also had to say good bye to our 600 novels as the expenses for freight were truly astronomical. One freight forwarder sent us a quote of almost US$ 1,500 for transporting a box (50 cm x 50 cm x 50 cm, 40 kg) of old books from Port of Spain to Hamburg! I was not pleased at all.
Back in Germany we started the paperwork in earnest. I often think it was invented there. When you have lived 31 years abroad, there is quite a bit you have to do. On the other hand, it is no way near as bad as some people may want you to believe. We got registered again, went to the government agency about work (required) and saw about health insurance. All this went without a hitch, which was a very good thing as fate had prepared a little curveball for me. I had agreed with Günter & Yvette that I would take over the online part of their business and try to expand it into eBay.de and especially Amazon.de. That was the first time I noticed that not all in Germany was as I had expected it. Especially the tax office seemed to be staffed with incompetents. Applications were left on the desk, others weren't keyed in, some things arrived again and again while some forms simply got lost. It was truly catastrophic! It took three months until had my tax number and by then it was too late for Christmas shopping, which is by far the most important time of the year for this business. I got pretty upset, let me tell you.
The real surprise was something else, though. Back in 1992 I lost my hearing in my right ear. Then, in 2009 I almost fell flat on my face after 38 days at sea when we arrived in Darwin. There and in Bali it was so bad that I stumbled around as if I were completely drunk. The feeling of imbalance persisted and I could not look back when riding a bicycle or stand on one leg. This brought me to our family doctor, an ear-nose-throat specialist and finally to the MRI. The magnetic resonance imaging very clearly showed a 1.4 inch brain tumor in the back part of my brain, where things are especially tight. I did not like what I saw and immediately went back to our family doctor. Apparently he didn't either, because he phoned the neurosurgery right away and sent me there. The neurosurgeon in charge did another test on the spot and went to talk to the boss, not without telling me that he was not sure whether I could go back home again that day.
Fortunately I could, as we were to be awarded the Circumnavigators Prize by the German organization Trans-Ocean, which is somewhat similar to the Seven Seas Cruising Association in the States. This all happened in Cuxhaven on 23 November. The prize was a heavy cube of crystal glass, which had a laser created globe and a yacht in the middle, while two sides had DHARMA BUM III 2013 and Trans-Ocean edged into it. Now it has an honorary place in our house.
On 2 December I got into hospital and on the day after I was operated on by the boss Chefarzt Professor Dr.med.Wolfgang Börm and Stationsarzt Bernhard Feldt. I was supposed to wake up early that afternoon, but in the evening I found myself in intensive care where I spent the night. Although my head resembled that of Dr. Frankenstein's monster, the operation had gone well. The headaches which started after a couple of days were truly terrible. Think of a really bad hangover which goes on and on and on and on. Right now I am back home and I continue to take strong pain killers. I will be able to celebrate Christmas and Aurora Ulani's 10th birthday here. On 3 January I will go into a special clinic for three weeks, as my face is still partially paralyzed and my right eye can't really focus. So far, so good.
Gloria has pretty much finished the first daft of her Chinese book about our circumnavigation, while I am still dealing with various German publishers. I'd much rather have a contract in my pocket before I face the daunting task of a full-length book. No matter what, the next few years will be interesting, as our financial future remains written amongst the stars. One thing goes without saying: Life on land is MUCH more expensive than life on a boat and the phrase we don't have enough money to sail around the world is simply a bad excuse.
We hope that you will realize your dreams, that you have excellent Christmas holidays and wish you a roaring New Years Eve party!
Holger, Liping & Aurora Ulani Jacobsen - Quellenweg 2, 24988 Oeversee, Germany
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Monday, September 30, 2013
Two Months Back In Germany
Hi guys,
Now we've been back in Germany for more than two months and it is about time that I tell you what's happening with us. We experienced the worst shock before we even got there. We had planned to send our 600 books to Germany but found out that the post offices in Martinique as well as in Trinidad only do airmail these days. Not really an option. We tried to book additional overweight luggage online and in advance with Condor, but that is not possible in Trinidad. Next step was a freight forwarder, which was the winner of all. We asked for a quote for a parcel of about 0.5 m x 0.5 m x
0.5 m weighing about 40 kg. One quote from the harbor in Port of Spain to the harbor in Hamburg was for US$ 1,227! So, sadly we had to abandon our precious books in Trinidad.
We still had enough to carry, though. If it hadn't been for a Chinese chef who had worked in Port of Spain, we might have run into serious trouble. He put lots of our stuff in his luggage and we picked it up in Frankfurt. We expected our luggage troubles to be over by then, but unfortunately that wasn't so. I had strained a muscle in my lower back very badly, was hardly able to walk and had to see the doctor on an almost daily basis for a while. I am glad to say that all is well again now. : – )
One of the things that pleasantly surprised me, was the fact that we had no trouble to rejoin the German healthcare system. We just had to go back to the same place where I had been insured as a student and that was it. That took care of my most serious worry. Aurora Ulani absolutely loves the school and brought back a lot of As already. Even in her least favorite subject, which is math. Gloria and I had to go to the department of alien affairs in a neighboring city for several times and for a while it even looked as if they required her to take German classes before we could proceed any further. At which point she engaged them in lengthy discussions in German as to why she didn't like the idea (waste of her time and waste of her money) and subsequently the requirement was dropped altogether. She is now using the old textbooks of my sister in law from Chile. She might even learn a few words of Spanish this way <grin>. She now has the equivalent of a "green card" and doesn't have to go back there for one year.
All in all it wasn't all that difficult to get back into the system. True, we did have to go to numerous government offices, but it was mostly just the filling out of forms and copying of documents. Opening up the online shop is a different matter. The software platform plentymarkets is very versatile and adaptable – but that also means it is very complex. You don't usually buy it, but actually rent it and it is being maintained on the server of the developing software company. Unfortunately it is anything but user friendly. It will take me a very long time to get the hang of it and if you make a mistake, you always have to fear legal action from the competition. I was hoping to be ready with both eBay and Amazon for Christmas shopping, but now it looks as if I am not going to make it. That is too bad, as Christmas is the most important time of the year.
Another thing we have to figure out, is what to do with the money we got for DHARMA BUM III. Being back in the system does not mean that we have an old age pension or anything like that. My absence of 31 years from my home country makes that impossible. We do not want to leave the money simply in our bank account but the opinions of everybody including the experts vary to an astonishing degree. I tend to think that it might be a good idea to buy a house with the money and then rent it out. In this country the return on investment is very small, but still better than cash. Our friends from Taiwan are of the opinion that it is sheer lunacy to invest in Germany. If not Taiwan, than at least somewhere else in Asia. And maybe it would be better in any case to look at bonds, as the real estate market doesn't look promising at the moment. But Gloria's friends have always been high flyers and are born optimists. Then there is the apartment in Garden City (Taiwan). Soon we will have to decide what to do there as the contract expires. The price of similar apartments in the area went up by almost 70% since Gloria bought hers! Not re
ally a good time to get into that particular game at the moment. But somehow we absolutely have to make sure that we have enough money when we are not able to work anymore as we can see right now that we won't be able to make any reasonable amounts of money here. Lots of thought for plenty of discussions...
An old friend gave us three bicycles, so that we are able to make bicycle-trips in the neighborhood. At first Aurora Ulani didn't want to try out the bicycle and zoomed around everywhere on a little foldable scooter made of aluminum instead. After we promised her a toy, everything changed. It took her about one hour to learn to ride a bike and we can only say one thing: Bribery works! Last Tuesday she took the bicycle to ride to her ballet lesson in the neighboring village. Gloria and I never really wanted to get into that sort of thing, but she wanted it so much, all her friends are there and the costs are minimal. We bowed to the inevitable. Today she is having her first little party, which was completely her own idea. She planned and wrote the invitations herself as well as a program for different tastes as well as a timetable. Not our idea, I assure you! We wonder where those genes came from.
When the weather permits, we take a lot of walks through the forest, around the lake and down the river. It is very beautiful and it is a lot of fun to hunt for mushrooms. The other day Gloria surpassed herself by baking fresh mushrooms with spring onions and garlic in a Pyrex glass bowl. Absolutely delicious! There is one distinct drawback to all this gluttony. Our waistlines are expanding mercilessly... We have abandoned butter and margarine altogether by now. Delicious food will stay part of our way of life which is to be expected from a proper Chinese lady. Gloria even bought a deep fryer, as lots of vegetables need to be fried for seconds before being used in various recipes. On the boat I already vetoed a big Chinese gas jet burner which is normally used to bring the wok up to speed
and I am equally disinclined to have our house burn down here. A deep fryer seemed like the more sensible option.
Talking about the house: Our tenant upstairs is moving out all of a sudden on 1 November so we are moving in there. It is an apartment with a big living room, one bedroom and a huge balcony. Still too small for a family of three, so we will recombine the small place we live in now with the bigger one upstairs. There is a certain amount of reconstruction necessary, but it sure beats having to walk through rain, cold, wind or snow every time you leave your bedroom. In fact, once we have properly moved in, gotten our own furniture and decorated the place it should be very nice indeed. After all, we bought and renovated the house to our tastes in 1996 – with floor heating and all. We are really looking forward to living there!
We got a little car right after we got here, because out here in the boondocks you really need one. So we are living a very "normal" landlubber-life and I have to say that I agree very much with what sailing guru Bobby Schenk has to say about coming back and reintegrating oneself. People make much too much of it. It is way easier than living on a comparatively small budget on a sailboat for years. I also agree with another one of his opinions: That these days there are way too many people out there who shouldn't be there in the first place.
Right now we are very glad to have come back here, to spend time with family and old friends and re-discover the ways of the people in north Germany. Of course we miss our yachtie friends very much as well as the many beautiful places we have visited in the past eight years. Fortunately there is eMail and other electronic media, so that we can still stay in touch. In the next summer vacation Gloria and Aurora Ulani plan to fly to Taiwan. Gloria hasn't seen her family since she flew there from Langkawi and our daughter shouldn't forget all the Mandarin-Chinese which we so painstakingly taught her. We also continue to teach her Calvert School, because English is still her best language at the moment and we don't want her to lose it. Right now she is reading German translations of Enid Blyton by the bucketful. To be on the safe side, she has already joined two libraries, so we don't expect any problems in this department in the near future.
Very soon the autumn/fall vacations are beginning here. The summer is gone for good. In the shops you can buy all kinds of Christmas stuff, but our favorite "Glühwein" (warmed and spiced red wine) is not yet to be had. I am sure we will find it any day now. We've bought an electrical footpad for icy evenings (we do live in the basement after all) and wonder how we will like the first winter. At the moment everything looks real good and we just hope that next year will be just as good.
We do hope that you are well and are enjoying life just as much as we do!
Cheers!
Holger, Gloria & Aurora Ulani
Monday, February 04, 2013
Latest video https://vimeo.com/58765661
Latest video https://vimeo.com/58765661
I met Aurora Ulani and her parents Gloria and Holger at the anchorage of Chaguaramas in Trinidad.
They just finished their six year long circumnavigation with their catamaran DHARMA BUM III.
My partner Alwin met DHARMA BUM III already 5 years ago in New Zeeland.
All shots are handheld with a Canon 7D.
Music: Audiojungle
Consolation by Jochem Weierink,
Relax and Be Calm by Improve Audio
Ocean by Andrey Lvov
Holger, Liping & Aurora Ulani Jacobsen
Catamaran DHARMA BUM III
HolgPhone: +18683995675
LipingPhone: +18683325494
Powerboats, Chaguaramas, Trinidad, 10°40.61'N 061°38.22'W
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Christmas Greetings from Chaguaramas in Trinidad
Tuesday, 11 December 2012
Dear Friends,
Here we go again & another year is nearing its end. It's been quite eventful, but so have been the last seven or so. : - )
It doesn't look like Christmas here in the Caribbean at all, especially as it is tropically hot and humid all the time. Fortunately our Dutch friends Arno & Peter lent us a small air-conditioner. Otherwise we probably would have long gone crazy here "on the hard" at Powerboats. We might be mad anyway. Just the other day the boss here, Don Stollmeyer, said that he should get his head examined for building three boats. I feel the same about people who have owned three boats.....
But I better start at the beginning.
Last year this time we were still in Richards Bay, South Africa and couldn't leave there as we had a broken shroud. When that was finally repaired, we went around the Cape of Good Hope, which was one of the most nerve wracking trips we have ever made. Nothing really bad happened, but we were well aware that this could change in an instant. The weather reports are no longer reliable and in the rough conditions there things break a lot more than elsewhere. After the shroud we needed a new course computer, new steering cables, the rudder quadrant got damaged, the saildrive packed up and and and. Whew!
We were more than happy to be arriving in Hout Bay, which Liping soon renamed Howling Bay. There are plenty of storms in the area, but in Hout Bay you have the added katabatic winds which quickly reach 60 knots and above quite often. Pretty amazing to watch, really. It was pretty damn cold as well, but we still liked it there.
When we left, we were accompanied by numerous small albatrosses. These guys are very cool fliers. I never got tired watching them from the warmth of my survival suit which I had bought at a public auction in Whangarei. For the first week or so, I almost constantly sat outside to look at them during my watch. Then came an unexpected stop in St. Helena for a stud on our fresh-water automatic pressure pump had broken in the rough conditions and all our drinking water ended up in the bilge. We only had emergency rations in jerry cans left.
This time (and for the very first time ever) we sailed together with another boat. Kirk on SALSA, a bright red Alberg 30, had left on the same day, albeit from a different harbor. While we had an excellent sail with 25 knots right behind and only the genoa up, the little SALSA was rolling very badly, making life for Kirk more than a little miserable.
St. Helena was pleasant enough, even though the anchorage was pretty much in the open ocean. Just imagine if your dinghy outboard packs up at just that place, preferably at night. Soon we were ready to continue to Brazil, with much the same conditions as the first leg of the trip. Because of the abominable crime rate, we passed Salvador de Bahia right by and went straight to Itaparica, where crime is not quite that bad.
We didn't stay very long over there either as we were eager to get our saildrive fixed. The best place for that seemed to be Chaguaramas in Trinidad. We went too far offshore (as we usually do) and were rewarded by a strong counter-current as well as a prolonged calm. We were obviously in the doldrums or
Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). As a result the much smaller SALSA, which had stayed much closer to shore, arrived three days before us. The end of our life as yachties was crowned by a 50 knot squall with plenty of rain and zero visibility amongst heavy traffic between Trinidad and Tobago.
Some friends have left already, some are still here and some will be arriving soon. By now Kirk is already in Cartagena and I have to agree with him on one thing. The End of a circumnavigation is more than a bit anticlimactic. One might even call it a major letdown. It seemed as if the only one who was visibly happy for us seemed to be our old buddy Jörn Grote from Hamburg who has been living in Trinidad for ages and would like to do a circumnavigation himself. The wife of our friend Capt'n Fatty had already warned us against the "post partum depression", but alas, it didn't really help. "The way is the goal" (Confucius) is probably the best way to describe the whole endeavor.
It feels pretty weird fixing the boat, just to sell it right after and we miss (Already!!!) Madagascar, Chagos, New Zealand, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, the Tuamotus, the Marquesas, all our friends over there and many yachties we might never see again. And we are looking at pictures of the San Blas Islands. I am almost tempted to disregard the voice of reason and simply continue sailing... Cool was the fact that our very good friend Michael Herbst on TANOA got the coveted prize from Trans-Ocean this year for his circumnavigation and his voyage around the south of Australia and Tasmania. Congratulations, Michael. Well done!
Costs have gone up considerably since we were in Trinidad in 2006. It is no longer inexpensive here and repairs and the prices for spare parts are astronomical. Looks like the Caribbean is not our cup of tea, just like Brazil. However, our Dutch friends Arno & Peter did some wonderful work on our middle hull (nacelle) and our saildrives are in the shop getting new bearings, new drive-plates and so on. Soon that will be finished and we can continue with antifouling and do the rest in the water. US$ 30 per day on the hard gets to you after a while, especially if you have done nothing but spending money for the last seven years. As soon as our boat looks reasonable again, we will start to seriously look for a buyer. We are even contemplating a yacht broker, as we really should get on with our lives and start to earn some money again.
Aurora Ulani is in 4th grade in Calvert School and she is still a very good student. She really doesn't like practicing, though. On top of that she has to deal with German Pusteblume 3 as well as Chinese reading and writing. Just recently I found out that I have now lost my permanent residence (PARC) in Taiwan for sure and would have to start the whole process from scratch again. I have no work-permit and I can't even simply extend my Taiwan drivers license. And for Liping it is very much the same in Germany. No matter where we go, it means back to square one and a whole mountain of paperwork. Right now it looks as if Germany is out for financial reasons, so we will probably soon be teaching children in Taiwan again. Many of our old students are married by now.
I contacted two yacht brokers already and was told that times are singularly bad for selling a boat now and the location isn't much better. I might have much better chances elsewhere, particularly Australia. We will only entertain that notion if we can't get any reasonable offers here. But who knows, we might still get to visit the San Blas Island and to meet a few of our old friends again. : - )
Now we wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Hope all is well with you and yours!
Cheers!
Holger, Liping & Aurora Ulani Jacobsen
Catamaran DHARMA BUM III
HolgPhone: +18683995675
LipingPhone: +18683325494
Powerboats, Chaguaramas, Trinidad, 10°40'51.70"N 061°38'02.71"W
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