Jack Van Ommen — “20th Anniversary of My Dream Come True”
In 2004, on a business/family visit in Europe, my brother-in-law, Herman, 12 years older than I, gave me a ride to Schiphol Airport. “Jaap, don’t you think that you are a bit too old to try to sail around the world?” he asked. I didn’t think so — 68 didn’t seem that old. I wish he were still around so we could discuss that question now.
I could have never expected, in my wildest dreams, that I would still be doing this 20 years later. I am writing this from the Hemingway Marina near Havana, Cuba, on my way north to the Chesapeake. It’s become my second home since I arrived there in 2007 by way of the Cape of Good Hope, having sailed roughly 70% of the solo circumnavigation. In the next couple of days, I’ll be entering the Old Bahama Channel and the Gulf Stream for the fourth time since 2009. And planning to cross the Atlantic for the third time since 2007. Belize became the 66th country I have touched by boat since 2005.
Three marriages, two shipwrecks and one “wreck of a ship” better remain my limits. My last shipwreck was here on the Cuban coast on February 3, 2022. I was on my way to Rio Dulce to do some repairs and check it out for when I grew up and limited in my physical activities to better match my elder equals. One of the reasons for my stop here in Cuba is to try to recover some of my personal things from Fleetwood II.
Fleetwood II was built from one of the three Naja kits I had imported from Whisstock’s Boatyard in England in 1980 while I was having the original Fleetwood assembled in winter 1979–1980. I bought it from the second owner in April 2014, after my shipwreck with number one near Ibiza on November 16, 2013. This is the boat with which I completed the still-missing part of the circumnavigation back to the Pacific Coast. I did this in 2016–2017 from Puget Sound, following the 2016 Baja Ha-Ha as a non-official participant (because of singlehanded disqualification). But Richard included me in the onshore fun and let me pitch my story and the SoloMan book.
I continued through the Panama Canal, and exactly a month after my 80th birthday, I finished the missing portion by crossing my 2007 inbound voyage — back-asswards.