Yesterday Michael launched his boat Aventus, and in the evening we had a beer and a chat in Tonne 98, the little marina bar. From boats and the work on them we come round to life. He spent many years roaming the world with his family – Tanzania, Sweden, Stockholm, then Starnberg (hence the number plate on the car) and now Brodersby. He tells me his son studies at the University of Twente, races regattas. – Twente, it strikes me, now that was … wasn’t that where that thirty-foot one-off came from, the one that lay alongside me in Stockholm’s Wasahamnen in 2021? Seven students who’d sailed from Kiel to Stockholm in one go. – 2021, in the summer, in Stockholm? That was Jaffa! – Yes, Jaffa, that was the boat’s name. I remember it exactly. – My son was aboard. – Hold on, I’ve got a photograph.
I have a photograph of Michael’s son aboard Jaffa on my phone. The seven of them had invited me aboard that evening – a fine and very long evening in the Scandinavian summer.
And as Michael writes to me later on WhatsApp, his son Niels and the others from back then still remember the evening just as well.
