A new Flying Dutchman is on the high seas, on a voyage to the source of the wind: built to disappear and reappear, to become a legend, and to pass through many hands. Every part of this unmanned vessel bears instructions for those who will find it: people are asked to repair and improve the ship and put it back on course.
Why should they bother?
They do.
They do so for the same reason that people before them have worked for years to build, improve, and further improve this ship, without payment of any kind. It sounds impossible – and yet again and again this strange vessel is spotted, each time in a changed form: driven by headwind.
Windvinder is a seafaring challenge. A challenge to everything that has always remained the same – the suggestion of a new possibility. And this is exactly what this journey is about: this pull from beyond the horizon.
What makes us move? What drives us to push back our boundaries, further and further, beyond what is necessary or even seems possible? Why do people risk their lives to reach the North Pole, or the moon? Nobody would want to live there.
But what then do they want?
Windvinder does not travel from A to B; he is on a voyage to explore what drives him, towards the source of that invisible power that keeps his wings moving.
In the summer of 2010, a follow-up expedition will set sail from the North Sea and head out to wherever Windvinder was last seen, somewhere in Oceania. People with adequate sailing experience are welcome to apply to join this expedition; write to the expedition at info@windvinder.com
We will follow the trail of stories, rumors and legends that this unmanned ghost ship leaves behind on the islands – and MEET THE MAKERS OF ITS LIFE JOURNEY.
These stories and encounters will be made into a book.
Windvinder is on a journey to make the intangible tangible. Our voyage will be to reap what he has sown - and continues to sow. Messages from islanders and fishermen, sketches on bits of paper, models from driftwood and drawings in the sand: interviews overcoming language barriers to communicate about that which knows no barriers... the breath of an invisible creature, a whiff of an idea.
The purpose of our expedition is more than “just” the reconstruction of the voyage of an unmanned vessel that is driven and piloted across the world’s seas by the wind alone. More than anything we want to use the collected fragments to reconstruct the journey of a living, growing saga: the rumor of the impossible, which may turn out to be less impossible than we think.
A hole in the known world - that’s where the wind comes from.
WILL YOU JOIN US ?
A few weeks, some months, or a couple of years on the classic sailing yacht THOR, on an expedition between the past and the future, to the edge of the known world…
We will travel for years, from one island to another. No navigator will be able to plan exactly where we will be going and when. Of course, we will have pilot charts, weather forecasts and storm reports to refer to, and we will be able to reconstruct Windvinder’s PROBABLE route – but we will have to be able to react flexibly to everything we hear and find on the way. Set course from one rumor to the next, chasing a ghost ship that is sailing where the wind comes from: beyond the horizon.
Do you still want to come?
Then write now. More information per email: info@windvinder.com
The voyage goes from the North Sea to the North Sea, with a detour around the world.
Starting summer 2010.
CREW WANTED
Requirements:
We need creative, enthusiastic, seaworthy people with practical and improvisation skills
People must have good English skills, any additional languages are an advantage
Boatbuilders, aerodynamicists, navigators, oceanographers and anthropologists – graduates or not – are especially welcome
but above all: only experienced sailors!
(in other words, people who know and respect the sea.)
If you can't join the expedition, but you think it's a wonderful project and you'd like to support it: All donations are gratefully received! Bank link Expedition to the Origin of the Wind : Wipke Iwersen, IBAN: NL 71 PSTB 0008 19 62 21 BIC: PSTB NL 21 |
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