The first thing you might ask yourself - why the name NEXT LIFE?
That is a long story. So here it goes.
Once upon a long time ago, I started a company called ShipConstructor. For years and years I struggled along to make it survive - pretty much working 16/7. I also spent about half of every year on the road - if a city is on an ocean with shipyards or designers, I have been there.
Then Silke came along, just at the time when the company moved from the basement to a real office building. ShipConstructor grew quite nicely now, but I did not. I was still living in the old survival mode, hunting from one possible deal to the next one. When Silke suggested a little break - like going to the movies, a short vacation at a beach with nothing to worry about - she would hear the same answer over and over from me:
"I have no time. We can do that next life."
This went on for a few years until Silke made me get our first real sailboat. She is pretty smart that way. A Bavaria Vision 40 called "The Kid" was purchased within 2 months or so. The reason for the name "The Kid" is another good story. I was really sceptical that I would be able to make enough time to actually use an expensive toy like that enough.
But - Surprise! I got hooked on sailing. I soon could be seen going to 'work' on The Kid with Chester, but ending up going for a nice single-handed (and two-pawed) sail in the sunshine around this island or that one. After six months of doing this I made a New Year's resolution on New Years Eve. I immediately called the office and informed them that I would only work on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Perpetual long weekends - yeah! I was sceptical if I could do that, but announcing it to the office was too much pressure and I actually stuck to it.
Enjoying it so much, I decided 6 months later that I would only go to the office if needed. Great that I had spent the last years training Darren to take over from me. We had actually spent so much time working and traveling together, that some people thought we might be an item. Nope, Darren still got married to Naomi. But he proved very capable of keeping me out of the office.
Then came the big test. Cruising to Glacier Bay - Alaska and back, on a not so small boat (The Kid - 40 feet long) for 71 days (pretty long), with two adults (Silke and Rolf), one daughter Kim, and our two best friends our dog Chester and our cat Sparkles. That was pretty tight for us at times. When we came back we still liked each other, and wanted to keep going. But, the summer was over.
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| Silke, Rolf, Kim, Chester, Sparkles are about to leave for Alaska. |
There was only one problem. I was now dreaming of distant shores and Silke was afraid every time the boat moved too much. When gusts hit and heeled the boat over, she was not happy, to say the least. What would then happen if we would be in big seas with gusty winds?
So Silke's reaction when talking about crossing oceans was always
"Rolf - you sail the boat there - I fly there."
Okay, I thought. Not the best, but better than nothing. I can do that. However, living on a boat with two adults, two pets, occasionally our daughter and friends or relatives, was pushing it. We felt that we were a little bit beyond camping-is-fun in our lives. The we remembered the at one of the boat shows 2 years earlier we had - just for fun - stepped onto a catamaran. It was a Lagoon 440. Boy did that thing have room. You would not fall over the sleeping dog onto the dozing cat before pushing off from another person - who now has a nice bruise to show for it. Also, I thought - "That thing does not heel. Silke would be happy."
I just happened to be in Vancouver when ir crossed my mind again and I dropped by Fraser Yacht Sales, the local Lagoon dealer. Sure enough they had a Lagoon 440 on the docks. It was even with people. I checked with the broker and he told me - "Sorry, she just sold, and anyways, this model is not made anymore."
I got pretty sad at that point. But then he said - "Lagoon is coming out with a new model called the 450. One of our guys will be at the Annapolis boat show in two weeks. They will have hull number 2 on display."
You won't believe in how little time I had tickets to fly to Annapolis. Nice town. Been there many times. After all, it is on the water and it has a number of ship design offices. Speak, ShipConstructor customers and partners in the area. I even had a dinner meeting with some of them and did NOT bill it to ShipConstructor.
The Lagoon 450 looked sweet. I went on a test sail - no wind - with a dozen people. It was not crowded at all, even thug everybody was outside. As one of my sailing buddies later said. "You did not buy a boat. You bought acreage".
Watch the video and start dreaming with us.
So what does this mean? Of course, you guessed it. The next life had arrived well before the current one expired. How can it get any better?
