The Crew

Michael:

born: Dec 1960
function: captain, navigator, 1st engineer, photographer, smutje
hobbies: sailing, travelling, skiing, cooking, photography, image processing,... and since recently golfing (just a sign of maturity but it does not say anything else !!!!)
profession: geophysicist with specialisation in Remote Sensing and space-based Earth observation systems and applications (see more details here or here)

Ivana:

born: Nov 1961
function: admiral, smutje, look-out (wo)man
hobbies: travelling, skiing, hiking, reading, and maybe soon golfing
profession: cartographer,s family- and home facility manager

Lea - attractive helmsman
always a garantuee for
a berth in Italy

Lea:

born: April, 1997
function: helmsman, navigator, 1st officer, smutje
hobbies: swimming, snorkelling, volleyball
profession: student










Julia:

Julia - ice cream killer! 

born: April, 2000
function: helmsman, 2nd officer, entertainer & animator
hobbies: swimming, snorkelling, diving, ice skating (which is a bit difficult while we are on the boat)
profession: student









There were many additional crew members who shared vacations or helped us transferring T-Fish from one location to another. To name a few: Jogi, Matze, Quirin, Ralph, Simon, Volker, Eduado, Pier Giorgio, Mark, Stephen, Ben, Mike, Rainer, Rene, Massimo, and last but not least Charly. He is my PhD supervisor and became 'a sort of' a family member over the years. My kids call him 'Opilein' - in particular when they after something from him! He shared many cruises with us.  

Yes,  there are whale sharks even in the Med although they look different

Charly:

born: March, 1949 
function: helmsman, smutje, look-out man, 1st class passenger
hobbies: swimming, snorkelling, cooking and eating
profession: since recently emeritus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michael's Background:

I was raised as the 4th child out of six (!) in a small village in Northern Bavaria. My parents came to Bavaria as teenagers/young adults during the post-war period and met there during their education, married and settled down in a small village between Nuremberg and Regensburg in the late 50's. As 'foreigners', not original from the area and not sharing the catholic denomination common for this area, they never were fully integrated into the village's social life. The curiosity of the traditional, conservative and maybe even stubborn village inhabitants was further elevated through our open house and interest in culture, art and foreign countries. Soon our house became a sort of a focal point of 'different-minded' people which raised the suspicion by the locals of being a conspirational meeting point of some left wings, communists, sub-cultural movement ..or whatever else.

Contrarily to my parents and as a kid of the village, I was fully integrated, playing in the local soccer team and made all sort of nonsenses with my farmer friends. The farms and surrounding forests were our play grounds. I was not at all a book-worm at this time but devoured adventurous books whenever I came across them. Remember the stories of Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking, Jack London's The Sea-Wolf, Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, Jule Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, Around the World in Eighty Days, Twenty Thousands Leagues Under the Sea,  Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and R.L Stevenson's Treasure Island, all very inspiring, still today.

Later I became fascinated by documentary films and novels of historic and actual expeditions (Cook, Magellan, Humbolt, Pizzaro, Cortes, Shackleton, Amundson, Scott) and at the age of 14, ham radio (callsign: DF2RQ, ex Z21HQ which I operated while I lived in Zimbabwe) gave me the opportunity to get closer to real expeditions and to speak (or morse) via the radio to people living in exotic places.

Luckily, I was raised during a time when travelling became more and more affordable (today I am not convinced that this was good for our 'home planet' at all!). This allowed me doing first trips outside Europe after finishing my high school. These trips brought me to exotic places like the Comoros Islands, Mayotte Island and Madagascar and included 'hitch-hiking' on cargo vessels. I think at this time I was closer to the German 'Der Wandervogel' movement from which the beat generation originated from (e.g. Kerouac's 'On The Road' and 'Lonesome Traveller') than to the past '68'er and 'flower power' hippies of my generation. This does not mean that I wandered through nature, lilting some lyrics, but that I felt closer to the nature and outdoor adventures rather than practising self-discovery through spiritual religions.

I was also lucky finding a profession which combines my interests in science, technology, and travelling. As an expert in Remote Sensing / space-based Earth observation system I am coordinating science and research activities for understanding and monitoring Earth system processes. The international context of my job requires ample business trips in- and outside of Europe, including occasional field trips to exotic places.

As an expatriate working for donor and international organisations, we had the opportunity to live in different countries (Zimbabwe - 3 years, The Netherlands - 9 years, Italy - 5 years, Brussels, Belgium - 3 years, ...and as it looks now soon we will be back in Italy) allowing us to raise our kids with different cultural backgrounds. They hold a German passport but in fact are real Europeans, fluent (or almost fluent) in German, English, French, Dutch, Italian, and some Spanish. Compared to them my language skills are unfortunately very limited.

I started sailing with my dad in a small inflatable equipped with a sailing rig, 'circumnavigating' the Neusiedler lake in Austria. But this was only a 'one-off' vacation experience and only years later when I entered my professional career, I had the required resources to follow my sailing passion. Until then I was bound to virtual trips with Bernard Moitessier, Joshua Slocum, Sir Francis Chichester, Sir William Robin Knox-Johnston, Tristan Jones, Rollo Gebhard, Bobby Schenk, Winfried Erdmann, Wolfgang Hauser, Tania Aebi, Aved Fuchs, Erich & Heide Wilts, and many, many others.


Here a list of my sailing experiences:

Bandholm 27 in Medemblik, NL, 2002

• sailing a small inflatable around the Neusiedler Lake, Austria (early 70's)
• renting a 33ft with student friends in Kroatia (80's)
• renting a 42ft catamaran with friends in Southern France (late 90's)
• owning (together with colleagues) a 20 ft kim keeler, sailing on the Berlin and Mecklenburger lake district (1993-98)
• practical coastal sailing license in the Baltic Sea (Denmark, Germany) (96)
• owning a Bandholm 27, which we transfered from Berlin to Leiden, sailing in Holland (Ijsselmeer, Frisian islands), and our 1st North sea crossing to England (98 - 2004)

Tehlikeli sailing the Baja California, 2012

• transferring Tehlikeli from San Diego (USA) to Cabo San Luca (Mexico), helping a sailing friend with one leg, bringing his boat from Northern California to Kiel (2012)
• owning a HR 352 - see the T-Fish page for trips we did with T-Fish so far (2004 - now)