Berni, Adventurer and Musician

“I can’t” is a powerful judgement about yourself. As long as you argue for your limitations, you’ll be right.

When I read this sentence, it hit me like a bolt out of the blue. Whenever I was on travel, I was already considering what my next destination should be. Looking at the horizon, I feel passionate about the colorfulness of this world, and the more I experience I get, the more I want to learn. And I can.

Many years ago I realized that being close to water or especially to the ocean fascinates me in a way quite hard to describe. It feels like freedom. And the power of nature. The power of this world. I feel my true nature as an adventurer, explorer and traveler. With the urge to never stop learning, I am driven to get to know foreign cultures, languages, people’s stories. My creative and curious mind always looks for challenges and experience. It’s time to go on a journey and break out of comfort zones.

But there is not only the adventurer inside of me – there is also the artist, the pianist and composer. In the intense process of preparing our journey and changing life upside down I started again to create and produce music, trying to express the colorful world of emotions of the journey with sound. Joy, anticipation, passion, respect, fear, doubts. You can have a look at my portfolio on the bernifox music page.

Last but not least think about your limitations. They might not be true.

Stephan, Sailor and Engineer

Looking back, there was quite some luck involved that I became a passionate sailor. When I was a child, my parents and I spend many summer vacations in a tiny village at the coast of the Baltic sea. One year, the local sailing school offered a free test sail on a Sunday afternoon. I was so excited about the sailing experience, that my parents signed me up for a junior sailing course starting the next day. There, I learned my first lessons and got addicted.

Living in the heart of Germany at that time, it was very difficult to practice sailing without a sea or proper lake close by. For some summers, I went on 2-week sailing vacation with the local swimming club to the northern part of Germany, until I started with yacht sailing in the early 2000s – with the strong intent to go sailing at least for one week per year. This soon turned into two weeks, and then two times two weeks. I found a group of great sailing buddies, together we explored many areas across Europe, mainly long-distance trips, covering the Canary Islands up to Iceland.

Sailing is not my only passion. I’m an Engineer by heart, and buying Johanna was a great way of combining my Engineering skills, learning new techniques and handling materials with sailing (although I hope that the time spent will shift more from engineering to sailing over time :-))

What I like most: Being anchored around New Year in a remote bay in the Med, where you are absolutely the only sailor and even human being around.

First picture with us on Johanna in Rome, 2017