Hello my fellow Steemians! Its been a while since my last post. Heres a bit of a story about what i´ve been up to.

The Plan

For quite some time now, two of my brothers, my cousin, two close friends of ours and I have been meeting in our beautiful little garden, creating a place of concourse, sitting by the fire dreaming, talking and conspiring about a great multitude of things, including the plan to acquire a simple sailing vessel for the tribe.

The idea behind this is to learn the ropes on yachting, in order to hopefully, someday, experience an adventure together. Starting in central Europe the goals are to see some of this beautiful continent and to merge into a homogeneous, coordinated brigade.
Most of us share the heritage, stemming from great seafarers such as the dutch and certain germanic tribes. This also contributes to our mutual yearning and cunning to sail the sea.

Eventhough we do not have tons of money, we want to see how far this idea will take us, not to be disencouraged by the challenge it poses to upkeep a boat. In this case, the more people involved, the merrier! It would be awesome to gain some attention and support through Steemit guys and girls!

Living in Mannheim and spending much time in our garden, that lies directly next to the greatest river flowing through Germany, the Great Rhein ( In german referred to as the "Vater Rhein" - "Father Rhein" ) we have been able to watch the boats elegantly chug by, or race up or down the keen stream. Most of them are moterboats owned by the middleclass locals and river barges, delivering coal or other goods. Some sailboats are seen from time to time, with thier masts flat down on deck, because one cannot sail this river!

- In between the garden and the coal powerplant (in the backround) lies the Rhein.

The Illusion / Nordmark II

After a few months of searching the w.w.w. and driving around looking at possible objects for our project we stumbled apon the "Illusion" / "Nordmark II". A 32 meter fishing-boat, then outpost-boat from the late 1940s. According to the readout and the pictures displayed, it seemed to be in tolerable conditon and with some effort repairable. After we auctioned the thing, we thought we had hit the jackpot! The only abnormality that bothered me and my mate was that the advertisement read >"no viewing possible due to time-consuming job and long distance drive - key handover once payment transfered" - the owner.<

So I got on the phone with the proprietor and she wanted us to drive asap. 1,5 hours to bring her the money so that we could pick up the key and then continue our drive up, beyond Hamburg (more than a six hour drive from our point). At that moment I certainly knew something was very fishy. She also had a very snappy manner on the speaker.
Luckily we were able to find the position of the ship on google maps, thanks to the advertisement mentioning its approximate whereabouts! ;) So after discussing the matter ( and the whole conversation with this woman ) with the team, stubborn to see what we might of just bought, three of us jumped in the car and drove up to the place to check it out, before handing over a bulk sum of money to some stranger.

After more than 6 hours on the road, we got to the spot around 8 a.m.. Driving down the road towards the docks we could see the huge mast and then the hull emerging out of the mist. We had found the Illusion!
Full of amazement at first, our hopes were yet to be crushed as we came closer to see that it was covered in graffiti (Not displayed on any of the photos within the auction. They turned out to be shot 5 years prior to our arrival).

- The once beautiful boat. "Illusion / Nordmark II"

We boarded her, to realize that she had already been plunderd and ransacked. Apparently someone had also been using her as a sleepover and party hangout. The control wheel had been stolen. We went under deck and to our mild surprize, the hull was a total wreck from within. She simply hadn´t been looked after appropriately. Over the years rust had eaten all the steel beams. A total disaster, just waiting to sink to the ground of the river Stoer! A pile of junk, costing some thousands and thousands to salvage and wreck.

So, we packed our things and drove back to Mannheim. "The town of man". And didn´t react to the owner after that because she tried to fool us, bigtime. Multiple threats about lawyers and such and such left us absolutly cold. Nothing came of it in the end. And we forgot about the Illusion. Only to occasionally bring up the story infront of friends to have a bit of a laugh about the line of events, I cannot completly retell here.

The Koke

About a year later, lessons learned and still out there to get a boat. This time looking for someting a litte more reasonable, we just recently found the "Koke". ( The name Koke is a East Frisian maiden name )

Shes 72 years old, crafted completely out of solid oak planking and mahogany interior. 10m long, 2,50m broad, weighing a staggering 6,5 tons! Shes a beauty, in good conditon and quite the bargain. 17 Ps diesel engine, basically brand new ( 50 hours of operating service ). 2x main sail & 2x foresail, solar panels and the whole lot. Someone really took care of her through all those years.

- At the moment shes in the hall waiting to be worked on after 5 years of slumber. We have a boat!

Next things that are planned:

• learn as much as possible about sailing, in theory.
• get working on her somewhere around March / April 2018.
• trying to be prepaired investing a bunch of money in repairs and such.

If all goes well, we can side slip in the middle of April and get going, direction: Outward bound!

Strange enough!?

The bloke we bought the "Koke" off actually bought and trustfully transferred the money to the "Illusion" after we decided not to! We found this out the first night we met together at a small inn, he told us his story. It wasn´t to long ago that he unfortunately fell for it, without inspection first. The boat is called the "Illusion" and the name proudly represents its story. He is currently trying to get his money back, which is proving to be a very difficult matter. Trust is good, but examination is better! After eying up the new boat we took him with us towards Amsterdam, because he was in need of a bit of fun. His first time in the city he had a blast! and we plan to meet him again, next year around January in Heidelberg - Germany.

If you like our project and want to support us and our eager plan to preserve, post about and cruise this "old lady" it is possible to donate at:

BTC Wallet: 17kSEZQcYjfhH83LAgxZiGdEcBnQPcusqg
ETH Wallet: 0xaf931700c7fad5bf1f41736fb3ffa93a343f2426
LTE Wallet: LdqynadyjJiWKj7Tsacfz7MxLjo56doJ2g

- Here´s a snapshot of me looking a bit staunch on the deal.

Yours sincerely,

Googlefrueh