Nick Jaffe is one of those guys who does the things you’d like to do but probably caved to the plethora of reasons not to.

In one of his adventures, he took a sailboat from the U.K. to Australia. you don’t have to be a sailor to know how long of a trip that is. and if you are a sailor, then you’ll know how much harder of a trip this already hard-sounding trip actually is.

after stumbling upon his homemade videos taken along the way, I selfishly looked him up for questions about my own trip, but after trading a few emails back-and-forth, I realized this his journey and struggles should be shared with more than one person.

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you’re known for crossing the Atlantic single-handedly. and filming it. when did you first decide to make this trip?

Ah! I thought it was my charm and wit… Nevertheless, there are worse things to be known for I guess. Sailing across the Atlantic solo with a camera in a small boat is something I completed in 2007, arriving in Barbados from the Canary Islands – A passage of 30 days (I later also crossed the Pacific). I first decided I would like to sail for the purposes of adventure and exploration in around 2004. I was hiking and came across a steel ketch laying at anchor in Wilsons Promontory (a beautiful national park around five or six hours drive from Melbourne). It was seeing that ketch which was circumnavigating Australia that really made me think. Initially I was exposed to the idea of long distance sailing through the efforts of Jesse Martin. I had read his book when it came out, even though I had never sailed, or really had any interest in it – At the time, I read the book simply because we were the same age.

It wasn’t until I was hitch hiking from Stockholm up to Narvik in Norway, that I decided that perhaps I should look back into sailing as a means of transport & adventure. I had a little savings, and it was just enough to put a deposit on my boat (a Contessa 26), and convince the owners to let me pay the rest off over six months, at the risk of losing all my invested money if I were to miss a payment. It was a mad situation, but I pulled it off. At the time, it was 2006, and I was living in Berlin, Germany. I’d moved there on a one-way ticket out of Australia, as my family roots had originally come from the Berlin area, and their history intrigued me (my great-grandfather and great-uncle were prominent German composers & pianists). I found some family remnants in my name (originally, Scharwenka), but to my knowledge I was the second (and now last) living relative. With the purchase of my boat, I then decided upon the destination: Australia.

you mentioned a ‘mad situation’, so be completely honest with us here: did you have enough money for the payments? or did you have to hustle? and have owners been known to, well, track down their boat and come repo it?

Basically the mad situation was a couple of things. Firstly, I had agreed that if any of the monthly installments were missed, they could keep my deposit and any money I’d given them. This was incentive for them to sell the boat to me over six months, at a discounted price. So, there was a ton of pressure, especially towards the end, because if I missed my last payment, they could technically have taken everything I’d given them, and even keep the boat. The last payment was particularly difficult, because the company I was working for at the time was a sketchy operation, at best. It was just a single-man company, which was attempting to build and deliver a piece of software the owner had written himself, without knowing anything about software development. He was taking enormous loans from UK banks to bankroll the venture, however I was the only person developing the software. The owner of the company kept running out of cash, and consequently the little I was actually being paid would take weeks, if not months to be paid on to me… At one point I had absolutely no money, and collected bottles on the streets of Berlin to pay for food. Berlin had a system where you could collect bottles, and put them into a supermarket dispenser, which would print off credit at that supermarket. My invoice was long overdue with my employer, and he had since stopped replying to emails and calls. I had to shut his computer systems down and demand payment. He claimed it was extortion/blackmail, and put lawyers onto me for ‘hijacking his investment’. I didn’t know whether that was possible – I just wanted my last payment so I could pay the boat off and quit this ridiculous job. I returned the computer system, and this action got his attention enough to get another overdraft and pay me. That was the last payment on Constellation, and we were home free.

I then moved to England and got a simple job as a bartender. I got paid regularly.

which was harder – the physical or psychological? one of the only times you seem to come across flustered is when you were sitting in no wind.

The psychological aspect of the trip was definitely the most difficult overall. There were definitely times of total fatigue and frustration that were demanding physically, however, most of the effort and energy was on the psychology of the trip. During the times of sailing, it was the mental effort to stay upbeat, focused, and sailing. In between the passages it was of equal psychology difficulty trying to just keep going – Financially and otherwise. It is a very hard undertaking to do something like this alone, and often one simply loses their ‘mojo’ …Which must be maintained for multiple years in my case because it took that long to actually sail from the UK to Australia.

There were many other times I became angry/flustered/frustrated which did not make it to camera. The problem with filming oneself, is that you only take out the camera and talk to it when things are going well. It is very hard in the middle of a difficult situation to pull the camera out and start talking. Therefore, there were many moments not caught on film. That’s not to say I was angry all of the time, however I’m just mentioning the conditions in which things were actually recorded… If that makes sense.

give us one of those moments not video’d that you would have liked to have been recorded and put in your film.

There were some real moments of total joy. An unexplainable feeling of connectedness and wonderment I guess… Total happiness and comfort in the world. It was the kind of experience one may have during an LSD session. However obviously it wasn’t drug induced. This happened a few times, and in some ways changed my outlook on life entirely. My outlook and feeling of the world became more akin to a strong, quiet, and reflective atheism of sorts. I could really only liken it to a Buddhist outlook on life – A connected wonderment, and incredibly strong realisation of the finite, and genuine realisation of how little and pointless we are in the grand scheme of the universe. It was a great feeling of comfort, to feel ones problems and pettiness wash away with the sea. I think maybe these kinds of spiritual glimpses are the kinds of things people work to experience and feel in continuity. While I can fondly think back to these moments, the humdrum and complexity of modern life quickly takes over, and they are hard to remember in times of difficulty. So, as you can imagine, trying to capture those kinds of things on camera are difficult.

On a more practical level, I experienced tremendous electrical activity in the Bermuda triangle for many days. It was impossible to capture on camera because it was too dark – However, at one point there were swamp fires I think in South Carolina, that were blowing smoke 500nm offshore to where I was located. The sunsets were a very dark, ominous orange unlike I’d ever seen before, with electrical activity slamming across the horizon. I was terrified of being hit.

sleeping patterns – some live by the ‘up every 15 minutes’ rule, others sleep when and for how long they want to… yours?

During the beginning of my solo nigh sailing, I found it very hard to sleep at all. I recall sailing across the coast of France, and needing to do my first real overnight solo sail. I was terrified of hitting something. I refused to leave the cockpit. Thankfully it was only a 24 hour sail, so I could stay up for that period of time. It wasn’t until I was doing 4+ day legs that I could relax a little into sleeping with the boat unattended. The 15minute rule is very dependent on where exactly you are. If you’re sailing across Europort shipping lanes, or across the straits of Gibraltar, obviously it’s fairly important you keep some semblance of a watch. However on multi-week voyages, it’s very hard to maintain this rhythm, and probably pointless. I ran a MerVeille radar detector on my boat, and as I crossed the Atlantic, I would
generally sleep in intervals of up to 2 hours – I also found that I would naturally wake up whenever the boat movements changed. I saw just two ships on my transatlantic. Both of which were picked up by the radar detector before I spotted them visually.

how much money did you spend going from the Canaries to Barbados?

There was nowhere to spend it, ha. But, to answer in regards to provisioning, etc, I spent roughly $500 US dollars on food and water (I carried bottled water because my tanks could not be used).

but a daily budget here. obviously you did some cruising and stuff, so take away the large purchase of the boat, how did it look for you per day? and did you fish? I saw you eating some ramen in one frame. bacially, total money spent from the UK to Australia?

A few dollars a day I would guestimate across the Atlantic. I was really, really low on cash, and ate a TON of ramen. Most of my Atlantic crossing I ate fried potatoes with onions because both of those vegetables lasted well at sea. Eggs also lasted about 2-3 weeks usually. I did fish, but, I had some crisis killing them out there. I became quite superstitious and felt there would be some kind of karmic backlash if I started killing en masse. On my entire voyage, I probably killed no more than five fish. I did crave fresh fish though… desperately. The superstition thing was odd – I just really felt so much of sailing alone has to do with luck – There is nothing you can do about being rundown in the middle of the night, or running into a submerged container, etc…

I honestly couldn’t tell you how much it cost for the entire trip. Via Paypal on my website, people (friends, family, people I’d never met) probably donated around $9000. I had a job at one stage which earned around $8000. So probably about that over two, to two and a half years…

a quick peek to your bio says you’re into cycling… how difficult is that, going from seaman-to-landlubber, having taken your boat now, from Europe to Australia?

This question probably isn’t particularly relevant, because I was not a competitive cyclist. I run an online bicycle store, and have had an interest in fixed gear & track bikes since 2004… I’m the co-founder of some tech stuff here, primarily in the realm of web hosting and cloud computing. I also have some side projects related to boats. I also work with the ocean rower Roz Savage doing her web stuff, and more than likely also some of her onboard tech as she crosses the Indian ocean next year.

film talks?

There is a feature length film being produced right now. Betweenhome has all the details – I am not really part of this venture, it is independent of me, and made by a filmmaker based in Berlin, named Jack Rath. He visited me in many locations to film – Coupled with my footage and his, he is making a full length documentary, which is due out next year.

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on top of everything else, Nick has a few planned voyages with SV Harmony, which includes Mexico next year, and
Pitcairn & beyond in 2012. He also co-founded a company that does such things as environmentally friendly web hosting, high performance cloud computing and he maintains websites for sailors and ocean rowers such as Roz Savage.

also I wasn’t the first one to realize Nick’s story was a good story. a lot of other newspapers and magazines picked up on this way before I did.