See you in 2025: intrepid yachtie sets sail again

Jan Beydals is off on another blue-water adventure, having recently been honoured in recognition of his many previous voyages. He talked to Helen Vause as he prepared to cast off.

Over King’s Birthday weekend, Jan Beydals could be found on his boat at Bayswater Marina, taking care of last-minute preparations for a long sea voyage.

As his grey head bobbed up and down in the cockpit, friends and other sailors hove into sight for a hug, to shake his hand and to wish the respected blue-water sailor bon voyage.

By last Wednesday morning, he was off, motoring out of the marina and heading for Vanuatu. He also has the Philippines in his sights and a two-year journey in mind.

It wasn’t the first time Beydeals had set sail for a long trip to faraway places, but he was pleased by the recognition of his mates at the Devonport Yacht Club, where he was recently awarded the club’s Fred Norris Memorial Blue Water Trophy.

Norris was a New Zealand pioneer of offshore sailing. Some of the earlier recipients of the trophy named for him include Dame Naomi James and Sir Peter Blake.

Talking to the Flagstaff before his depar- ture, Beydals says he was humbled to be in the company of all the distinguished recipients “who have done much more amazing things than me”.

The trophy was awarded to him this year to honour his many blue-water voyages, and also to mark the fact that so often he was sailing solo and, in earlier years, without the technology that now helps in many aspects of offshore sailing.

There’s probably not much Beydals doesn’t know about the things that can happen at sea.

The 72-year-old Dutchman started learning about boats and the ocean with his parents, sailing from the Netherlands on many adventures.

His parents had met sailing and it played a large part in family life. As Beydals grew up and then made his way through medical school, his father entrusted him and his friends to begin making their own big voyages.

He laughs to remember some of those trips, the risks, the excitement of them, as the young sailors diced with difficulties and barrelled through the night in high seas.

Risk was calculated with the confidence of keen young sailors who thought that they could make it – and they did.

He recalls a hair-raising tale of sailing over a treacherous bar at night to take a very tricky route through a string of small islands north of the Netherlands, with shifting sandbanks everywhere, waiting to cause a disastrous grounding at any wrong turn. Among sailors, the place was known as ‘the riddle of the sands’.

“We could see a tiny light way ahead. We just followed that. Later, we found out that the crew of a fishing boat that followed us had thought we must have known what we were doing and that we were showing the way.”

Then there was a night in the fog sailing somewhere off the French coast. “We didn’t know quite where we were, but I suddenly realised we were much too close to the coastline when I could actually smell the land.”

On those voyages, which may seem foolhardy in hindsight, Beydals honed the knowledge and skills that gave him the confidence to tackle even bigger journeys, solo.

In those days of no GPS, fine navigation skills were his strength. He relied on dead reckoning, knowing how to get the best out of a sextant, charts and calculations.

By the time he’d finished medical school his father let him take off alone in the family’s 31-foot steel boat for Curaçao, in the Caribbean, where he’d work and study.

On this trip, he made a bad judgement call that had nothing to do with his sailing skills.

To help a little with costs, he’d picked up a couple of crew and when they left his boat a month later, all of Beydals’ money went with them.

But Curaçao treated him so well, he decided he wasn’t going home. Instead he wanted to explore the South Pacific and to reach New Zealand. His job in health and tax-free earnings had set him up nicely to do just that.

In 1983, he set off sailing single-handed through the Caribbean and on to the South Pacific. It took him four years to reach New Zealand. Those days of freedom on the sea, the places he visited and the people he met, have kept him hooked on offshore cruising decades on.

For a while, work and career got in the way of long sea voyages. Beydals, now retired, worked as a psychiatrist in Auckland for my own. I know I can rely on myself. I don’t have to worry about anyone else, if they are okay. And it means I do get out and mix with local people.

“I’m perfectly happy on my own. The days go by fast and there’s always plenty to do on a boat. But of course there are challenging times. You do have to be tough and you do have to have plenty of perseverance.” three decades.

Beydals lived in the Auckland CBD for many years and drove over for the Friday night cheer at the Devonport Yacht Club, where he’s now a regular figure.

In 2014, he and his Philippines-born partner Jeff decided to move here, and together they built a house.

It was Jeff who sparked the plan to head to the Philippines, saying that to spend time in the tropical warmth would be “good for my bones”. He will join Beydals there later. His career demands he stay in Auckland for now, at least.

A sailing friend has left for Vanuatu at the same time as Beydals, on a similar vessel.

“We say we won’t race, but of course we do,” he grins.

In 2006, he bought Tumua, a Pacific 38 – a class popular in the 1970s – in Whangerei’s Smith’s Boatyard. Tumua is the trusted blue-water vessel he sails on today.

In 2011, he sailed around New Zealand. In 2017, he sailed off again with a fleet of island cruisers, but he lost his mast, fortunately not far off New Zealand and motored home.

Three months later, he started out again to cruise around the Pacific from Vanuatu to the Solomon Islands, the Philippines, Japan, Hawaii and the Marquesas.

Two years later, he again sailed solo out of New Zealand waters, bound for Tonga and Samoa.

Along with the pleasures of his journeys, Beydals’ multiple Pacific trips have given him an insight into how the ocean is changing, and not for the better – no one could fail to notice the fall in sightings of marine life.

In 2020, he sailed around the North Island. His next big voyage, in 2022, was a departure from his previous forays into the warm Pacific Islands. Beydals sailed solo the 800 kilometres to the Chatham Islands.

He laughs to recall that trip, one that he’s unlikely to make again. It wasn’t that it was rough and cold much of the way – he was prepared for that. And the seabirds were a wonderful sight. But he found the Chathams themselves too barren and bleak. “To me the pub was the best thing about the place.” Anchored in a bay some distance from Chatham Island’s hotel, Beydals would hitchhike in every day and hope someone from the bar would drop him back at night.

“And there wasn’t a lot of traffic,” he chuckles.

All the solo trips aside, Beydals points out that he’s far from a loner. “I love social contact and I’ve got many great memories of sailing with other people. But on some of my voyages it seems to work best if I am on

This time, he has a little more modern gadgetry on Tumua. He’ll be in constant connection via an electronic tracking programme that shows his position and boat speed. And to travel through the dangerous pirate-infested waters of Indonesia, he will have a friend on board for a few weeks.

He says we’ll see him again down at the yacht club in two years. “We love living here.”

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