Sun Sea & Sailing

First Impressions

2011-01-31T21:23:00.000+02:00

Gee, it's been a while since I last posted anything here… It's not an excuse (well, kinda it is), but things are a tad busy, setting everything strait with the company, the boat's arrival and paperwork, the day job, the paperwork and the paperwork… Ufff, more on that later.
Well, after a foray into deeper and more personal waters on the previous post, going back to the theme on the first post... I imagine that you pretty much guessed already about the idea I had, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this, so skipping some hot summers of day-dreaming and fast forward to more or less one year ago. There I was, in my daily routine of reading sailing news websites, when I see an interesting concept presented in an article which showed a boat with classical lines but built with nowadays latest technology, like carbon fibre semi-unstayed mast and a deep keel with a beavertail bulb. Actually, the article was a tad sceptical about it, but after browsing the constructor’s website, I got hooked only by looking at the renderings! Not only did she seemed beautiful (and boy, she is!!) she also seemed very well thought through with a carbon fibre boom well above head height not to impede the cockpit or the roller furling self-tacking jib tucked underneath the deck or even the also roller furling, tucked underneath the deck, asymmetric spinnaker. It even had a trapeze for those looking for that little extra nanosecond of a mile - and honestly, when racing, who isn't?. So, while browsing into the distributors’ page, I see that they do not have one here in Hellenic shores. And in a "what-a-heck" moment, I send an e-mail... And they answered back :)
After some talk over e-mails, we agreed to meet in Dusseldorf in the world famous (for those loonies about boats, at least) “boot" (boat in German, not the shoe one uses) to see the first Scandinavian Cruiser 20 live and see if the expectations were met. And there I go, alone, to Germany in January (think cold! Really cold, specially for a Southern European guy…) to my first business meeting with the founder and creator of what is one of the most beautiful sailing yachts I’ve ever laid eyes on (yes, I know, I keep repeating that she’s beautiful…) and the other distributors.
Sooo, first impressions? Well, arriving to the boot Dusseldorf on the eve of the exhibition’s opening, after going through most of the pavilions (hehehe, I got a preview before anyone else did), thinking that I must be in boat-lovers heaven, I arrive to the stand where she is. Around her, making the last tweaks is a tall blond man which I instantly recognize from the pictures, Nis Peter Lorentzen, the man behind this fabulous concept. I introduce myself and soon enough we start going around the first ever, hull #1, Scandinavian Cruiser 20… and boy, is she something… looking a lot bigger than her actual size, due to the slender, slick navy blue hull, the towering pitch-black carbon mast and boom, the thin slim carbon keel fin with her lead beaver tail, the amazing details of the wooden pole flag, the boom crutch, the tiller, the fat mainsail and the below deck self tacking furling genoa and asymmetric spinnaker, promises of a quick pointy boat and the finger light rudder looking like a modern art sculpture that wouldn't be dislocated in MoMA, the uncluttered cockpit, all the ropes tidy in their islets, just had me in awe. And when I started helping Nis in making the final arrangements and cleaning to have her in tip-top condition for the morning after, I was already imagining a perfect summer, late afternoon ride in the balmy sea that bathes the Greek shores…

But why, oh why?

2010-09-30T00:23:00.000+03:00

But before I head down the way I left hanging in the previous post (I guess I’ll have plenty of time to talk about Sun Sea & Sailing and boats and daysailers and sportsboats and racing and cruising – which, according to my friends and family, once I start it’s almost impossible to stop…), maybe I should “explain” how I got to Greece in the first place…
While in my last year of University, living it up like any other student that encounters himself in the imminent position of stopping being one, I dropped by the coffee shop where some Erasmus friends were hanging around amid a class break and something, or better yet, somebody, caught my eye… That somebody, being Greek and me a Portuguese – having just lost the Euro Cup in our own turf to them – the first conversation I ever had with my nowadays wife was a rather “warm” “exchange of points of view” about football, parking buses in front of the goal letting no-one pass and 20 year old “cry-babies" that should have run a bit more… The rest, as they say, is history…

In the Beginning...

2010-09-21T00:33:00.001+03:00

So… From where to start? Maybe from the beginning…
It was 5 years ago (February 2005) that I arrived in Greece, having finished my graduation in Marketing in Portugal, set to make a living in this country or, at least, try it. If I would succeed, well, perfect, if not – at least I had tried it! My first “port of call” was the beautiful northern city of Thessaloniki, where I was amazed by the close relationship that their inhabitants have with, although looking like a tame lake, is actually a huge gulf in the Aegean Sea, the Thermaikos, where the city abruptly ends…
Anyway, upon arrival, my main concern was to find a job, but without knowing the language it’d be a “tad” difficult to get into something in the area of my studies, so, while strolling in the local marina I saw a banner of a maintenance company that hung in most of the boats there and thought why not give it a try? I wouldn’t need to speak all that much, since the job was mainly physical or the experience that I didn’t had, could be learned: anti-fouling hulls, cleaning engines and boats, sweeping floors and other jobs. And hey, I’d be around boats all the time. I did get the job and stayed there for almost a year, where I was making a living out of this, some Portuguese private lessons to the locals and some sailboat delivery and touristic trips. All this period I’d spent my free time in a sailing course, although I already knew how to, but it was the way I found to actually navigate the boats that I worked on and insert myself in the environment – it was this that gave me some contacts to make the deliveries and the touristic trips. Back in Portugal I had started my relation with boating around my 14 to 15 years of age, when my father bought a boat and, although being born in seaside Lisbon, I moved very early to a town in the North, which was landlocked from all sides, we still would go regularly to Lisbon or Cascais, where the boat was kept. From that age on, I was hooked…
But eventually I found a job in Athens, in the Marketing area, in a Greek bank with Portuguese capital – to whom I had sent a CV – who called me for a job interview and were willing to give me a chance. And I took it! I had made almost 4.000 km to Thessaloniki, why not 600 more to Athens? I got the news that I had been accepted on a Friday, the following Sunday I had packed all the stuff and on Monday I was entering my new job in Marketing, which until today I still keep.
So, why to form a new company, in these dire times of IMF/EU bailout, dedicated to sailing in general and to daysailers and sportsboats in particular, in a country that is not mine, with all that it implies? Well, I guess I was foundering such idea ever since I was in Portugal, but back then things where still very uncertain to what I wanted to do with my future, the my coming here and the first years were always in adaptation/ survival mode… When I came to Athens I started sailing in the International Lightning class during weekends all year round in NOE (Yacht Club of Greece), with classes once again, with the same objective of getting acquainted and into the environment. But I wanted more, much more and one hot summer day I was leaving work heading home when I thought: it’s still early (around 5-6 pm) and I could go for a sail, if I had a boat, a small one, a dayboat like the Lightning, get out of the suit-and-tie, get into something more comfortable and in half-hour I could be sailing… And slowly-slowly (σιγά-σιγά), the idea started blooming…