After the events in Rotterdam we headed north with crews from Essent. On the first leg to Kiel, Germany we saw some high winds and rolly seas which made sailing interesting and the three on that leg did a great job after just getting thrown in the mix. Going through the Kiel Canal was a great experience. It was interesting to look over the banks and see farm land and people’s back yards as we motored past in our yacht. In Kiel we stayed at the British Yacht Training Center, the staff there was super friendly and the showers were hot. When the second group arrived they got there the evening before departure so they had time to get settled in. The next morning was freezing cold; there was a thick layer of frost all over the boat. The wind forecast looked good and it was only a quick one day sail to Copenhagen. The sail up was great and the second Essent crew did a great job too. When we arrived in Copenhagen we said our goodbyes and started to get ready for the COP15 climate meeting taking place from the 7-18th Dec.
Jake
2041 crew
A frosty early morning in Kiel. Photo by Harry.
En route to Copenhagen, through ‘Hoek van Holland,’ literally the ‘Hook of Holland.’ Photo by Harry.
Our leg 2 - Kiel to Copenhagen - participants from our sponsor Essent. Photo by Harry.
Early morning frost and fog in Kiel. Photo by Harry.
On November 11th there was a message on the Essent/RWE intranet: who would like to sail with the 2041 to Copenhagen? I signed up and a week later I heard that I was one of the four lucky people who got to go on the trip from Kiel to Copenhagen. First we got a list of stuff to bring aboard: clothes in several layers, boots, sunglasses and a torch or a headlight and last but not least: seasickness medicine… So I started asking my colleagues: “can I borrow your boots? What size do you have? Nine? Hmmm, I’m afraid they will be a bit too large…. Yeah, even with three pairs of socks in them!” Would a ski jacket be all right? And what if it rained? Or stormed? I’d never been seasick before, but I would bring the medicine anyway, just in case…
After the preparation and the packing, the trip started for real on Tuesday 1st December: Astrid and I were driven by taxi from Groningen to Kiel in Germany, where we met the crew: Conor, Derek, Harry and Jake, three Paddies and a Yank, as they called themselves. (O: A little later the other passengers arrived: Lambert and Gerrie, all the way from Den Bosch in the south of the Netherlands. Wednesday morning was cold: we’d had frost during the night, so we started the day with taking pictures of the boat in the amazing morning light. After that, the instructions started: don’t fall overboard!!! But in case you do or someone else does: what to do in case of an emergency. When “captain Conor” felt sure we’d taken everything in, we started sailing… Well, we left the harbour, using the engine. After a while, the engine was turned off and the sailing trip started for real! And I have to say: I’m usually quite good with words, but now I was just lost for words to describe my impressions. I’d forgotten how good it felt to be on the water, looking at the coast disappear in the sunset and feeling the wind in my hair. When it was my turn to take the wheel I felt really tough! It went amazingly well, it being my first time on a sailboat…
Kiel Sunrise - photo by Dity.
The purpose of the 2041 is to show how you can use clean energy on a daily basis. Being a sailboat, the 2041 is powered by the wind most of the time. The motor runs on biodiesel and there are two wind turbines and solar panels to provide electricity. Although all the lights in the cabins were led lights, we were told to switch the lights off when we leave a room. The message is clear: even if you have it in abundance, there is no reason to waste energy!
During the night we took shifts: three hours on and three hours off. At first it was a bit tough to get out of your gear: a safety vest, an “oilskin” (waterproof jacket and trousers), rubber boots, a pair of jeans, a pair of long johns, another jacket, a sweater, and last but not least a thermo-t-shirt, the kind you’d wear when going skiing. All that in a compact cabin, when the boat is heeling over all the time. At one time, I was standing on one leg, with the other against the wall, to keep me from falling over while I was pulling my sweater over my head. In short: great fun! I’m sure I had enjoyed it a bit less if I hadn’t taken the seasickness medication: although our experienced crew told me the weather wasn’t too bad, very calm really, I was literally thrown off my feet a couple of times. I found out the hard way the wheel isn’t the best thing to hold on to when that happens… (O: But then again: I have a feeling that this crew won’t be impressed by the weather until it’s a gale or a full storm…. I really admired the way Derek and Conor were standing calmly beside the wheel, holding a cup of tea in one hand and steering with the other…. When just a while before I had been standing with my feet far apart to keep my balance and two hands on the wheel to keep the boat from hauling to the wind. Oh well, I’ll just blame my boots: they were nice and warm, but they were no sailing boots. (O:
The next morning, we arrived in Copenhagen, the place where it all happens between December 7th and December 18th! On firm ground again, the strangest thing happened: it still felt like the ground was moving, so I asked “Is it me or is this room swaying?” Harry’s answer was, after he had given the lamp that was hanging over the table a swing: “It’s not you, it’s the room!”
Leg 2 sailors.
Copenhagen is amazing, raising our awareness in two totally different ways: on the one hand there is an outdoor exhibition of pictures of a 100 different places on this earth, that you have to see before they disappear Surrounding this exhibition are numerous globes, decorated by artists, each with a different message about global warming and how to stop it. These solutions vary from simple ones like “put a sweater on when you’re feeling cold instead of turning the heating up” to the effects that planting different plants or changing the colour of your roof has on the climate. On the other hand: there are Christmas lights literally everywhere and even worse: whole terraces filled with parasols heated by terrace warmers…. What a waste of energy!
On my trip back to Groningen, I talked about our voyage and I got the question, very rightly so, what I did to change the future and to stop global warming. Do I have solar panels on my roof, for instance? I don’t because I live in an apartment building and tenants have no permission to place anything on the roof. But then I thought: I can urge the company that owns the building to do so! Because, rephrasing Robert Swans words: when it comes to global warming, the biggest danger we face right now is if everyone thinks that someone else will do something about it…. So how ever little it is what you can do, just do it and do it today!
After being chosen out of 40 other Essent colleagues that applied to join the 2041 crew to sail from Rotterdam to Kiel, my excitement became reality on 26 November when we had to be on board by 10am.
My 2 other colleagues, Rienk and Michiel, and myself quickly got familiar with the yacht’s crew. Captain Conor, first mate Derek and crew members Jake and Harry gave us a warm and practical welcome. The 67ft sailing yacht would be our home for the next approx. 56 hours.
The sailing plan was to leave Rotterdam by 3pm, arriving at open sea by 6pm and sail in the following 36hours to the Kiel Canal. From there it would be another 8hrs motoring to our destination in Kiel. The wind appeared to be somewhat less than the storm from the day before, but nevertheless we were strongly advised to take our anti-sea-sickness pills in time.
The journey to Hoek van Holland was comfortable (by motor), but things changed rapidly once we arrived at open sea. With (to my experience) a big swell and quite a strong SW wind (20 to 25 knots) we had to raise the main sail in order to start sailing along the Dutch coast in northerly direction. This in itself was a great experience as it was already dark. That first night all three of us got seasick (not all that bad), but after a good short sleep in the cabin everyone was OK again by Friday morning early.
Since we sailed 24 hrs a day, life on board consisted of 3 (at night) or 4 (daytime) hour watches. It was weird to notice how quick I could adapt to that scheme. On every watch I spent quite some time on the helm. Staring at the compass (70 degrees!) and correcting as the swell came in from the stern and that made the yacht roll. I found it most difficult to find our way at night when we were in the shipping lane just before the Kiel Canal. It was difficult to recognize the correct green light from all the other lights on shore, in the water and on other (large!) ships that were around. At the end of my watch around Saturday 0:00 just after Conor ordered to get the 3rd reef in; the wind gusted up to almost 50knots and we lowered the main sail and proceeded by motor. We arrived at the Kiel Canal locks by 3am and we had to wait until daytime due to regulations. Saturday was an easy day on board: Motoring the Kiel Canal for 8hrs until we arrived at the British Kiel Yacht Club around 5pm.
Saturday evening was well spent together with the crew in the Irish Pub in Kiel. Guinness, pizza and good talks!
I would like to thank 2041 and especially Conor, Derek, Jake and Harry for making this trip the unforgettable experience it was.
After speeding across the Atlantic, battling our fair share of storms, we arrived under motor in Rotterdam an eerie calmness to the water, as fog drifted in. This was phase two of the crew’s inauguration to 2041. The sailing was over for now, so we began the corporate transformation of the crew and yacht. Our sponsor, RWE and Essent, where to combine their celebratory merger with the return of the yacht 2041, which had left the very harbor from which she is moored now, ten years earlier. Sailing a hundred thousand nautical miles, circumnavigating the globe, circumnavigating Africa, racing the Cape to Rio and the Sydney Hobart, enlisted by the world leaders to spread the word, to educate and inform, visiting numerous delegates, schools and universities on her voyage, the “Voyage for Cleaner Energy”.
On arrival the crew changed gear, from four wheel drive to two. We where now on land and our goal had changed, rather than fighting the elements to get to our destination, we now had a job to present “2041” to the public and media. We cleaned and polished the yacht, flew our banners, battle flag and butting. We now took our place in the “2041” team, to do our part. Friends, visitors and the curious visited us, as we prepared for our grand arrival.
The day of our official arrival went quickly, everything went according to plan, the media did their filming and interviews with Rob, ever resilient, preaching from his home from home, the familiar platform of the yacht“2041”.
“2041” is a boat with character, one that grows on you, a boat on a mission, a boat with a purpose. All who sail on her, quickly pick up on this, as did the Managing director of RWE/Essent for the Netherlands that day. He took the helm and steered ‘2041” down the meandering river Maas, a memorable day for the merger of two great Energy companies, the director helming them into the future. As for the team in “2041”, our great success that day, was that of the helm’s realization of the task assigned to “2041”, which is hard to ignore when you’re driving the message, “the hope of a better future together.”
We then sailed back up the Maas, where several hundred VIP’s awaited our arrival, we glided the boat gently onto the waiting platform, our new main proudly aloft with the branding of our sponsor, an arched wall of water behind us shot from a Tug into the heavens. It was a memorable occasion for all involved with “2041”.
Several days later the crew were lucky enough to hear Rob Swan, our commander chief speak at Erasmus University, to an auditorium full of University students. It was an inspiring speech - I had heard him talk to delegates on previous days, but when Rob knows he has a chance to really inspire change, to inspire the future leaders, the future CEOs and directors of companies, his levels of energy sky rockets. Transformed into words, his story is a powerful message that is hard to ignore - one of dreams, one of self belief and dog-eared determination, where failure is not in his vocabulary. The audience absorbed his energy, inspired to focus their own energies in life, ambassadors for the future. As a small example of this, upon returning to the yacht from the talk, we where handed a piece of paper by the harbor master, a hand written letter from a student who attended the lecture, a sincere letter, apologizing for his lack of action with regard to the topic of not “using a green tariff” energy bill. The frustration of this student had been inspired into action, as small as this may seem, it was just one of the hundred plus students present, and Student’s when motivated can be a very formidable force.
With most of the team now heading south to Antarctica and E-Base, we on the yacht “2041″ are preparing to head North again, north to the Copenhagen climate-change conference, where some serious decisions must be made by global leaders, the clocks are ticking on our future, and I think the most important question we should ask ourselves is: “Are we to be remembered as the generation who destroyed the environment, or to be the ones who are remembered for saving it?” I know which one I’d like to tell my children.
Yesterday our team was happily greeted by Robert Swan, and it appears they are in exceedingly good spirits, despite the fact that their joking predictions about typical English weather certainly seem to have come true . . .
Coming into port, so glad the weather chose to cooperate . . .
Greeted by our fearless leader, Robert Swan
And . . . enjoying their welcome bubbly.
And our own 2041 Voyage for Cleaner Energy 350.org action photo! What a good-lookin’ crew . . .
En route to Copenhagen, through ‘Hoek van Holland,’ literally the ‘Hook of Holland.’ Photo by Harry.
