Going Dutch — Huub’s Pacific Puddle Jump
Experience, it is said, is a harsh teacher: You get the test first and the lesson afterward. That was certainly how Huub van der Mark came to sailing and cruising. A bit over a decade ago, in his late 20s, he moved from the Netherlands to New York to study acting. Instead, he got exposed to sailing, and became almost instantly enamored with the romantic notion of sailing over far horizons. He jumped in with both feet, crewing on other people’s boats in the Baja Ha-Ha and Pacific Puddle Jump. One thing led to another, and just 10 years after he’d first stepped onto a boat, knowing nothing, he did this year’s Pacific Puddle Jump on his own 38-ft catamaran — singlehanded. Here’s his story of that journey.
I remember that everything about boat life was so strange to me. I didn’t grow up near the ocean or boats. Starting as a crew member, or actually boat hitchhiker, sounded like a good way to start learning about it. I signed up as crew aboard the Abel Maramu 46 Kailani for the 2016 Baja Ha-Ha rally from San Diego to Mexico to see if I would even like the lifestyle. After the Ha Ha, I got rides on other boats all the way to Panama, where I signed on to a Vagabond 47 named Vagabond for the Pacific Puddle Jump.
Every night during my night shift from Panama, 39 days toward Hiva Oa in the Marquesas Islands, while looking at the stars, I would dream of one day understanding boats and doing such trips on my own boat. Everything broke on the boat during the crossing. The steering arm came loose from the steering mechanism. The light sail fell into the water and ripped into pieces. The halyard broke, which meant someone had to free-climb the mast (dangerous) to get a new one on. Water came inside the boat, and we didn’t find where it came from. And we did horrible shopping, so after week one, basically the other four weeks, we ate pancakes. I learned my lesson: Should I ever go on my own boat, I must be very over-prepared for such a trip.
As a boat hitchhiker, you stay shorter periods on boats. After Vagabond, I crewed on a variety of different boats and eventually arrived in New Zealand. I was able to make videos of those travels (as well as other land travel in Southeast Asia and Russia), which gave me a bit of an income.
Fast-forward a couple of years: I finally had enough money to buy a small boat of my own: an Alberg 30 named Tait Tait that I found in Guatemala. Other Alberg 30s have sailed around the world, and after crewing across the Pacific, I thought I knew quite a bit about sailing. Well, I was wrong.
