Special Peeps

I always talk about the "Peeps", the people we meet while we're out here cruising on the boat. Occasionally we run across some really special Peeps worth mentioning. Martijn Dijkstra is one of those.

We first met Martijn in 2013 when we were stuck in Oriental for some engine trouble on Kintala. We spent a month on the dock then, and had a chance to spend some quality time with him. Martijn is from Holland and has sailed extensively on both his first boat, Rotop, and his current boat, Prinses Mia, named after his daughter. Prinses Mia is a prime example of everything that makes a long distance cruising boat a worthy life. Everything is painted in splashes of brilliant color, from the freeboard, deck and wheelhouse to the interior woodwork to the sails and sail cover. It's filled with an eclectic combination of the modern useful and the historical classic. In every corner you look there are touches of his engineering genius and of his resourcefulness. Bits and pieces of salvaged boats are placed about—ship models that belong in a museum, a wooden wheel from a sunken tugboat, a ship's engine order telegraph, a huge iron coffee grinder, backsplash tiles handcrafted in Holland, a hanging oil lamp, a wood-burning stove, and polished bronze and wood everywhere—most of it acquired from the dumps in various harbors he's visited, other things traded and bartered for, a good bit of it handcrafted by Martijn himself. Martijn has an amazing talent of being in the right place at the right time.

A while back Drake Paragon did a 3-part miniseries about Martijn on his first boat. It's well worth the watch.

Martijn is the rare individual that's at home with both the sea and his fellow humans, and you feel immediately comfortable lounging among the collection of parts he's amassed into this floating home, listening to the tales of his travels interspersed with laughter. If you're lucky enough to run into him, you'll step off the boat and go on your way with a smile. And leaving your fellow humans with a smile is a bit of a lost art these days, so I'll take it.