Where friendship finds you

When I left my secure job at Siemens to take a year off and sail, many of my friends in Germany worried I was making a mistake. Some said so outright, others hinted at it in kinder ways. I knew it came from concern, not judgement. And yet during that whole time, postcards from them followed me along the coasts of Scotland, England, France and Spain, small lifelines back to my life in Erlangen.

The truest proof of friendship came when my friend Maria arrived in Puerto Mogán with Helmut, her husband, little Anna, who was just two and a half, and Fee, barely six weeks old. I had simply written, “I’ll be here a while, come if you’d like.”

(I was waiting out the hurricane season there on the boat, maintaining the systems and doing the provisioning for crossing the Atlantic.)

That summer in Germany had been endlessly grey and wet. Maria's mother thought travelling so far with two small children was complete madness, but their old paediatrician reassured them it was perfectly fine. So, Helmut booked a package trip with flights and a hotel, just in case my plan with the boat somehow fell apart.

As it turned out, they never used the hotel room. From the airport, they picked up the key and drove straight to the harbour. Without mobile phones then, I had to keep checking in at the harbour office to see when they might arrive. It never fully struck me how brave they were, travelling with a baby, a toddler, and Helmut, who could not swim at all. The hardest part was climbing down the steep, wobbly dock ladder to the boat at low tide.

Luckily, I had arranged with the hotel across from where we were moored that we could use their pool. That pool became everything to us. I still laugh about the sunburned Swedish grandmothers who swam there topless, without any concern.

Puerto Mogán yacht club was a colourful little world of sailors, tourists, harbour staff, and restaurant owners, and somehow we all fit right in.

Our days were simple. The children napped. Maria nursed Fee while I scrubbed the boat from top to bottom each day. I wanted it spotless so we would all feel safer. I had seen too many dirty hotel rooms ruin people’s holidays. A clean ship seemed far better than that kind of worry.

There were small joys too. Maria remembered the pine cone I painted in bright Rasta colours and mailed off as a wedding gift for my brother. Helmut even tried sailing for a day. He was quickly overtaken by seasickness, but for a man who only felt secure on solid ground and in the mountains, it was an act of courage.

They stayed more than two weeks. We took short trips inland, cooked fresh food from the local market, and each of us found a quiet corner of the boat to sleep at night.

Looking back now, from a life that has taken me far north and, oftentimes, into much colder and turbulent waters, those two weeks stand out as one of the simplest and happiest stretches I have known. It reminds me that sometimes the best decisions are the ones your friends worry about most.