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What has happened since 2022?

Jun 21, 2025
6 min read

Updated: 2 days ago


Mirko – What’s Happened So Far

November 3, 2022; the last newsletter landed in your inbox 962 days ago. But that doesn’t mean nothing has happened in the meantime. So let’s rewind briefly and run through the events in fast forward:


In November 2022, I flew back to Switzerland and left my boat, the Yum Yum, in the harbor of Whangarei, New Zealand. Thanks to a temporary work contract with Alltax AG in Basel, I was able to replenish my travel funds. However, what was supposed to be a six-month stay ended up lasting a full eleven months. After spending so much time in the South Seas, I hadn’t realized that July in New Zealand is the height of winter. I definitely didn’t feel like spending another winter in New Zealand right after a Swiss winter. So I didn’t fly to New Zealand until November 2023, when spring had arrived, and began working on a few projects to get the Yum Yum seaworthy again.

Shortly after I arrived, Daniela joined me—an Austrian woman who, at that point, had already been traveling with her backpack across various continents for more than a year and was now looking forward to trading hostel life for everyday life on board. We quickly broke the ice—maybe it was because of that bizarre start when, on the day of Daniela’s arrival, we unwittingly ended up with a few sailing friends at a racy variety show that was more like a striptease act. Or was it actually the Friday night beer session a few days later, when we danced in the workshop with Mo, the marine employee, using glowing hula hoops?


During the day, things were a bit more serious. Working as a pair, the boat work went almost twice as fast: we sanded the Yum Yum’s hull, cut through through-hull fittings with an angle grinder, and much more. After the work was done, we traveled together in the car—which we’d converted into a spartan camper van—across New Zealand’s North and South Islands, and then went sailing on the Yum Yum for a few weeks. Daniela then traveled on to Australia, which meant that a few weeks later I also flew to Australia to join her on a road trip along the south coast and through the Outback.

In April 2024, I headed back to New Zealand with Daniela as my only luggage, and we set sail for Tonga and Fiji, where we spent a few unforgettable months—in secluded coves, on the paradise islands with the locals, on the beach around a campfire with other sailors, or in the water with the fish. At the end of the year, I set off on a seven-day crossing back to New Zealand—my first time sailing solo. Daniela was already on her way home to Europe.


 Daniela put together a comprehensive travelogue with stunning photos and sensational videos of her entire journey, which of course includes our time together in the South Pacific. Since I don’t like duplicating effort, I held back on posting updates on this channel. Okay, maybe I’d gotten a little lazy, but anyone who’s read Daniela’s posts will understand that hers were in a league of their own!


If you’d like to dive into this journey, you can read the blog posts here: Click here for FindPenguins


Daniela - What's Happened So Far

In September 2024, I had left the Yum Yum in Fiji, then traveled through Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Borneo (Malaysia), and after another incredible month in December, I said goodbye to Sri Lanka to spend the final days of my two-and-a-half-year world trip in Paris with the friend with whom my backpacking adventure had begun back in 2023: Ria. From there, I finally took the TGV train back to Austria, back home. Who would have thought it?


The first few months back in Europe were just gloomy and cold—I’d completely forgotten what a European winter felt like. No white, soft flakes falling quietly from the sky and getting caught in my hair. No snowy landscape whose blanket of snow begins to glisten in the warming rays of the sun during the day. Reality presented slush on the streets, a whistling, freezing wind, foggy mornings, and a sun that desperately tried to spread its light over the tall blocks of buildings during the few hours of the day it was even in the sky.

Despite the cold and the gloomy December days, I was excited to see my family and friends again after such a long time. Most of all, I was looking forward to hugging them again and not having to settle for a “remote kiss” on my smartphone during a video call. Real hugs are simply the best, by the way (be sure to do them as often as possible ;-).


My best friend Karin had even organized a little welcome-home party, where most of my favorite people greeted me joyfully. Most of them hadn’t changed much—maybe a gray hair here and there—while others were barely recognizable. My two-and-a-half-year-old nephew, for example, whom I’d last held in my arms as a baby during a short trip home in April 2023, had grown really big and was already chattering away excitedly.


But it was already clear when I arrived in Austria that this would be just a visit and not a return home. After all, Mirko was still on the Yum Yum in New Zealand, and I was determined to join him again in a few months.


So I first explored another part of Asia in my flip-flops, only to swap them a few weeks later (December 2024) for my fluffy slippers back home in cold Europe, while Mirko continued sailing around the Fiji Islands and enjoying the warm weather. In November, he set off alone on the return journey to New Zealand. It was a crossing that took several days and was quite a challenge.


Mirko – Out on the Water for the First Time as a Solo Sailor

It was November 2024. It started off rather innocently with a broken plate and a leaking bottle of bleach—which the waves and wind, due to the close-hauled course on the first day, claimed as an offering to Neptune. Annoying, but no big deal. That same day, the chartplotter started displaying a man-overboard (MOB) alert and emitting a constant, irritating alarm—a shrill, incessant beep. Fortunately, the message wasn’t a real man-overboard alert—the device “just” had some kind of glitch and was fixed after a restart. Exactly as IT support would advise (“Have you tried turning it off and then on again?”).

On the second day, the very thing that sailors fear second most when sailing alone on the open sea happened: Water damage caused a short circuit, and all the equipment failed—no navigation device, no charts, no autopilot, no digital displays—nothing. Everything was dead. Fortunately, it was still morning, so at least I had daylight as I first stabilized the boat and then radioed Paula and Jim on the SY Freydis, who were just four miles ahead of me on the open, vast sea. After all, how are you supposed to troubleshoot a problem when you have no one or nothing (aka an autopilot) to steer the boat? It’s during a crossing that you really realize just how important an autopilot actually is. In true MacGyver style, I finally attached a rubber band to the steering wheel to keep the boat steady in the wind, and set about troubleshooting in the electronics cabinet. After a while, I found the spot that had caused the short circuit and bypassed it. Meanwhile, Paula and Jim had stayed nearby and assisted me over the radio.

You’d think that would have been enough unexpected events for a solo crossing, but fate had other plans. To make matters worse, on the very same day, the genoa halyard—the rope used to set, trim, or furl the genoa or headsail—snapped. Great. At least the solution here was clear: with the genoa reefed, the Yum Yum could still sail quite well.


The rest of the sailing days were (thankfully) uneventful, and I arrived in Whangarei, New Zealand, after five days.



Daniela – Back Together

I didn’t believe a word Mirko said (and rightly so) when he told me that, after those incidents, he was already mentally putting up a “FOR SALE” sign on his beloved yacht in New Zealand. As if he’d let himself get beaten down that easily!


In February 2025, Mirko came to Europe. Not because he’d actually sold the Yum Yum—no. He came to visit his family and me for six weeks. We had a great time with his family in Switzerland and with mine in Austria. I got to experience the Basel Carnival, Graubünden, and the beautiful Ticino, and Mirko got to know the lovely Lake Constance and the cheese-heavy cuisine of Vorarlberg. He also got to face my family and friends—um… got to meet them ;-).

After that, it was a done deal: In May, I’ll be heading back to the Yum Yum—for an indefinite period. Life as a nomad can begin!


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