Crossing the ocean, cautiously

Freelance captain Arian Poortman (1968) has just sailed the two-masted charter schooner Twister from St Maarten to the Netherlands. ‘Tomorrow morning I will disembark. The next ship is in July. And another in August.’

Arian has been sailing as a freelance captain on coasters and occasionally on sailing charter ships since 2011. ‘I come from the heart of Drenthe and wanted to sail from the age of five, my mother told me.’
What attracts him to sailing? ‘The real sailing, that’s what I love. Crossing the ocean.’ After attending nautical college in Delfzijl and later Enkhuizer Zeevaartschool, he went sailing on the Dutch heritage fleet. In 1994, he bought his first ship, the Fokkelina, a one-masted Hasselteraak for 18 passengers. Finding the inland waterways too crowded, he sold her in 2002 and went to sea. From Kiel, he sailed the Baltic Sea on the Koftjalk Engelina and the schooner yacht Saeftinghe. Among other things, the Twister sails for Fair Ferry, Fair Transport’s passenger pendant (without the two organisations otherwise being commercially linked).

Coasters

In 2005, Arian started sailing on a gas tanker, Chemgas’ cruising line coaster Twaite. ‘I had been a skipper for 11 years, but started as second mate for my papers. You can’t imagine a greater contrast with charter shipping. Golden handcuffs. Very high wages. A very tight ship. he guys had been working there for a long time. Only Dutchmen. They didn’t really have a broad view of the world. Noraly Beyer on television was already too black. But what they had to do, transport gas safely and cleanly, they did perfectly.’

‘We changed crews in a very short window, sometimes in as little as 20 minutes. In the galley cupboard there were four jars of peanut butter on the left, four jars of jam in the middle and four jars of Nutella on the right. If the previous crew had reversed that, we thought it was a bad crew. That tight. Not my world, but you learn everywhere. I had a six-month contract and that was long enough. Then I had my first mate papers and ended up on coasters, mainly with captain-owners. I still do, because I love captain-owners. They are dying out unfortunately, sometimes not in a nice way.’

Lida

In 2007, Arian started on the Lida owned by Jan Wind from Alkmaar and later became co-owner. ‘The Lida was a small 1,500-tonne ocean-going coaster from 1974, the former Arina Holwerda. I sailed around the world on it. Sometimes just five trips a year to often small ports. Caribbean, United States, Asia… From Portland crossing to Hitachi and then to Batangas… Mumbai, Karachi, through the Maggelan Strait… I fell in love with Cape Town and the Cape Verde Islands, especially the ones without an airport. We transported a lot of telecom cables. For a cable recycling company, we fished 9000 kilometres of cable between Cape Town and Portugal. Fishing across the ocean floor with a hook until you had it. After that, I got out of the business.’

Sailing

Arian reckons he has sailed on at least 40 coasters. For the last eight years, he has also returned to sailing ships as captain, including the Europa, the Oosterschelde and the Thalassa. Is he happy not to be an owner anymore? ‘Absolutely. That goes on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I was done with that.’

But freelancing also has its obligations. ‘I have all the necessary certifacates, but I have to refresh them regularly. A fortune for something you already know. I know some freelancers who have quit, because those costs are so high that you can’t reasonably translate them to your daily tariff as a free-lancer.’

When sailing, did he experience any exciting things? ‘Not particularly. Yes, very bad weather and then a sail breaking. But I wouldn’t call that exciting, that’s just part of the job.’
Do passengers come for the adventure? ‘Often they do. And I’m the first to quell that. Sailing is not an adventure, sailing is cautiously getting across the ocean. Keeping everything in one piece and especially keeping people in one piece.’

Source and image: an article by Heere Heeresma jr. in the Schuttevaer (for subscribers only).

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