About Me
Hey there and Welcome!
Hey, my name is Jakob. I’m an 18-year-old solo sailor from Austria, a beautiful country in the heart of Europe.
I started with sailing when I was 6 years old, mainly inspired by my dad who sailed a Hobby Cat 16 when he was young. My family and I often stayed on a small Croatian island in the summer holidays that just had a little harbor with one pier. I always loved to spend time on that little pier and watch the sailing boats that were moored there. I always imagined what it would be like to be out on the open ocean with such a boat and explore what is behind the horizon. Those evenings strolling through that little harbor were probably the birth hour of my love for ocean sailing.
How It All Began
So you would rather say Austria has beautiful mountains and landscapes but when it comes to ocean sailing that is definitely not a sport Austrians usually practice, we don’t even have a connection to any ocean in fact, even though we have some beautiful lakes. So how does someone from a country that doesn’t have anything to do with sailing get to that sport?
It all started when I was born (didn’t expect that huh?). In fact, it started even earlier. When my grandparents were in their young years they had a little sporty catamaran, a Hobie Cat 16. That is a pretty fast and agile two-hull boat with which they sailed in the Adriatic Sea and on lakes in Austria. That little boat awakened the sailing spirit in them and that also transferred over to my dad when he was born. He restlessly sailed with that Hobie Cat alone along the coast at a very young age and wasn’t bothered when stronger winds hit. If it capsized, he would just turn it around again and go.
Decades later I was born. My parents often took me into the mountains, which I love to explore until today, and my dad often talked about sailing and explained all different kinds of sailing-related things to me. When I was little my grandparents often took me with them on vacation to the Adriatic Sea and I remember walking through yacht harbors with them for hours on end and could just not stop looking at all the different kinds of sailboats.
Once my parents and I were on vacation on a small Croatian Island. It was shortly after sunset and getting dark. I was walking along the pier where the few sailing boats that visited the island were moored when an Austrian sailor approached me and asked if I wanted to see his boat from the inside since I was staring at it for at least ten minutes. Of course, I couldn’t say no and was overwhelmed when he walked me through it and explained how everything worked. I was 7 at that time.
Back at home, we had one big lake, on which sailing is practiced. Not long after, I attended a kid’s sailing class and got a little sailing certificate. That wasn’t any official license, rather than a thing to inspire kids to sail. Unlike others, I didn’t start with an Optimist, a little sailboat built for kids, but was soon out on the water with my dad in a sloop-rigged dinghy. And I loved it!
Unfortunately, when school started I drifted away from sailing further and further. Years later I started reading a book that I read when I was eight years old without even understanding most of it, which I somehow discovered again. That was the final element that inspired me to get into ocean sailing, and from then on I was obsessed with it.
