Weekly update 002: Lilly broke down

Dear family,

We have a challenging situation and we need your help!

We are struggling how we should call you, Patrons, FtB family members, Breezers or Friends, so what do you beautiful people prefer? We love to hear.

At the moment we are in the South of Croatia and stranded in a lovely city called Mile Ston because Lilly broke down. Luckily they have the best Oysters in the world over here, fresh from the sea and there is a Medieval wall like the Chinese wall around the corner. Lilly’s bearing from the spanner role got stuck so our multibelt broke and damaged a water hose. It was already dark and we had no place to go because it was a coastal road so we stood still on the road but within 2 minutes there was a friendly Croatian man, he is responsible for the road from the border of Bosnia Herzegovina till Dubrovnik. He towed us 10 kilometers towards a tankstation where we could park safely. He would not accept any money, only a Heineken so we had a drink and a laugh. When I said it is probably the Dynamo he said: Fuck Dynamo Zagreb and we started talking about football, not my favourite topic ;) but always a good conversation abroad.

Before we stranded we just spend 4 days in a 5 star luxury hotel, we got invited for free by a Dutch travelblog and TUI in return for some good content. We said yes because we wanted to give it a try, we shot pictures and made drone shots we are sharing now on Instagram and Facebook. We are not sure if this is really us but let’s see. At least we treated ourselves well with a proper bed, good internet to upload all the content towards our editor Pedro in Spain and we even had a cocktail together. We learned a lot and came to the conclusion that big five star hotels are not made for us. You have to follow a certain schedule and the vibe is just not ours. We miss the freedom, nature and if we have to choose among hotel types we prefer small boutique or family hotels.

The road trip is going well so far, we enjoy it a lot and came to the conclusion that sailing life is something really special. You are more disconnected and isolated than on land. And with the Perfect Sense our home is always with us and you don’t have to set up camp as with the rooftent on Lilly. We had one scary night when we drove from Hungary to Croatia and set up camp just behind the border in a beautiful lake district. We thought we saw some fireplaces from local fishermen but it turned out it was scary place of drugs addicts, dealers and refugees. So we weaponed ourselves with a fire extinguisher, a hammer and a knife and luckily during the night a thunderstorm started and people who were approaching us left. So we were very lucky and learned we will never set up camp near a border again.

Since the start of our relationship and journey we meet a lot of people along the way and they always ask us the following question; How do you do it? Living a dream life after a bankruptcy so Rianne decided to wrote a blogpost about it which you can read here: 

https://www.feelthebreeze.nl/post/how-do-they-do-it-living-their-dreams-after-a-bankruptcy-part-1-3

And you are definitely the ones who cheers on us and we deeply appreciate it. We both got our scarfs from the whole situation and know all of you have an unconditional support towards us. For us you feel as family.

In the meantime we are setting up our business again, we stay entrepreneurs ;) our goal is to create a brand of Feel the Breeze. A brand where people get inspired to live the life of their dreams. We will start with selling a symbolic piece of craftsmanship which fits our values and it will give some daily Breeze to everyone who’s interested in living their dream life. Besides products we will start again with selling services regarding personal leadership, healthy lifestyle, business coaching and of course you as a Patron always have first access and an exclusive friends and family price.

We teamed up with Pedro our editor, we met each other last year on Instagram. He was looking for a sailing family and we were looking for an editor / filmmaker and the universe connected the dots. For us it feels like starting up a team again, just like a startup. And were are very happy it works out so well. The cooperation really flows and we feel each other. So we are super excited to share this big news with you. From this week we will upload one VLOG a week on YouTube and you will always be one week ahead of the rest.

And yes, the Perfect Sense. She is at a boatyard in Turkey, completely naked without keel, teak deck and mast. At a boatyard we never met in person due to Corona and we have to trust them they are taking good care of her. Can you imagine having your home re-built in Turkey by a team you never met, just transferring big amounts of money and hope for the best. It’s a crazy world and we don’t know how they are handling the Corona crisis as a company, can they survive a crisis like this, what if they go bankrupt and our boat is there and we can’t enter Turkey. On the other side, the owner of the boatyard is sailing around the world as well and is now stuck in Turkey while his boat is on the hard at a boatyard in Panama so we kinda feel the same. They provide us with a livestream and we receive weekly updates from them with photos and videos. We have a good feeling it will all work out in the end and she will shine like new.

We would love to share more with you and please let us know how we should call you ;)

For now Feel the Breeze and much love,

Gerben,

Big kisses and hugs from Rianne & Benjamin