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ZwerfCat & crew
ZwerfCat & crew
Tuamotu, Makemo

This website tells the story of us, Frans Veldman and Ilona Kooistra, about our adventures with sailing yacht "Omweg" with which we sailed to New Zealand and our later bought catamaran "ZwerfCat" whit which we still sail around the world. We started without any sailing experience at all. We strongly believe that if you really want something you can make it happen. So we bought a sailing yacht and departed.

On this website you can read from the first idea, the preparations, the obstacles we experienced, until the current here and now.



Please note that we have a very small amount of webpages in English, simply because it takes too much time to translate everything into English. We rather go snorkling.... Sorry! If you would like to see some pictures, or run the text through a translations website, we advice to click on the Dutch flag because that way you will see everything we have done.



Panama Canal
Panama Canal
Panamakanaal(View on the map)
Here we are in the huge locks of the Panama Canal. Everything went perfect, luckily!

A small tour:

Handy: if you go with your cursor over the tabs in the menu on top, the submenu pops up. Do you have trouble to work precisely with your mouse, or do you have a touchscreen (smartphone, tabled ie.), you can also just click on the name of the tab in the menu. If you do this, the items of the submenu are listed in a new page.






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hoi, benieuwd hoe het met jullie gaat, waar jullie zijn. Misschien zijn jullie in Moorea een boot tegengekomen genaamd 'Petrushka', waarin ik interesse heb, ze heeft wel werk nodig. Groetjes, Bas
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Hello to you both. Where are you sailing and I can see you got a new boat. Hope all is well with you both.
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Are you the great Frans Veldman, father of ThunderBYTE? If you are the one, I'm here to say "thank you". I never had a better AV product. I hope you are enjoying life just as you wanted in your farewell letter. Long live and prosper.
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Volodymyr Kalish
Not able to see anything on "Follow us"->Map. Also, do you keep track of your location history to see at a glance the routes you have taken to get to places?
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Volodymyr Kalish
BTW, sorry for a previous terse post, Ilona & Frans :) When I was posting I was at work and had my "work mode" ON :) Now, on a nice Friday night, I wanted to say that I've always only dreamed of what you are doing! Hope you are doing fine.
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Hi Ilona en Frans, ik las een artikel over jullie in het AD. Ik ben een documentaire film maker uit Nederland, bezig met de maak van en docu over de impact van lockdowns all over the world op de lange termijn. Ik zou graag eens contact met jullie hebben om eens te kijken of ik jullie verhaal (als jullie dat willen) kan toevoegen aan mijn documentaire. Ik hoor graag of jullie daarin geinteresseerd zijn of misschien iemand anders kennen die dat kan zijn. Groet! contact: barbaravanrijn@outlook.com
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Hello Folks, fellow Ham radio user here, shore based currently, very interesting to look at your web site, pleased the IC706 is doing a good job for you, I used the same radio on my last boat and still have it for my next one, but have something more powerful on land now, safe and happy sailing and thanks for sharing your adventures with us..
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Hello dear new friends, we met in Santo Antao in November and it was great to sit on your yacht and enjoy your home made bread and tea from your water maker. I just looked at your crossing - wow! It looks quite a feat. I hope you're having a great time. lots of love Marysa xx
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Ilona Kooistra
Hi Marysa! Thank you for your message. It was wonderful to have you on board as well :-) It was a nice time there. (oops little late response, I did saw your message earlier but totally forgot to reply). Oh, we don't have English updates so I hope you read the Dutch parts... We're currently in the Marquesas and having an amazing time. Wow, nice country and people!
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Hi Omweg, you started almost at the some time at Cap Verdes as I did (I started 22.11.15), Union Island was also my first check-in. Best regards, Sven at the SY-SEVEN, the rusty yacht behind you ;-) at Tobago Cays.
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Hey Sven, how funny!! We remember you because of your rainbow-flag and you were first also on the rolly part in Tobago Cays and moved about the same time as we did :-D Do you have a website? I didn't find it when searching on the internet but I did see information about you and your journey on yachttrack when I just looked it up. Amazing that you also went to Union, not many people do this and then two at the same time, not knowing from eachother. Will you be going through the Panama channel?
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