Meet the “Destiny” crew – we are both RYA qualified skippers with 20+ years together on our numerous boats. We fall into our roles on-board with our complimentary skills, the same as we do in all areas of our life. We are cruising the world armed with experience of both power and sail and a whole load of other life skills we picked up along the way. A range of events over our time on the water has taught us to respect the power of the sea and learn from each experience.
Read our Long Story to learn how we came to this point – we have never wanted to be any place other than on our boat!
Our CREW
Ed van Zadelhoff
Ed is the skipper, chief engineer, chief medical officer and the calming influence in all situations. Mainly, when it breaks, he fixes it! On a boat that means he has to be an engine mechanic, electrician, plumber, electronics specialist, water-maker officionado and generally understand everything technical on-board. He also has to turn his hand to nursing and medical care from time to time!
He’s had a lot of practice at this on all our other boats – and never ceases to amaze with the solutions he comes up with! He has the patience and perseverance of a saint 🙂 He is, of course, also in overall charge of the boat – although we work as an equal team and can do everything individually if necessary – in a crisis, he’s unquestionably in control.
Before living on-board Destiny, Ed’s career has always involved managing large teams of people and finding operational solutions to a wide-ranging variety of business problems. Initially, he learned and practiced these skills in a military environment having spent 8 years in the Dutch Army. He later built a career in warehousing and logistics, managing teams of up to 300 people in multi-national distribution centres. Downsizing considerably when we bought our own business, his skills became even more important in keeping our tour operating business running like clockwork. He’s very practical and pragmatic – great skills on-board our boat.
Christine van Zadelhoff
Before living on-board “Destiny”, Chris has spent her life sitting on her a*** behind a computer for most of the day! Her original career was in business management and consultancy – everything desk based, staring at a screen. She knocks up a spreadsheet for every task imaginable and is a detail oriented analyst. Every can of baked beans on our boat has a bar code label and is recorded in our stock model 🙂
On-board, she takes care of the navigation and planning, as well as keeping all the ships records up to date – and of course, the blog. As a hobby, she has always designed and developed websites – loves playing with anything from Adobe, and can spent hours (and even days) tweaking the designs, playing around and writing content. Keeps her busy!
She is also quite technical when it comes to almost all of the systems on the boat and has no problem at all to work with Ed, get her hands dirty and help to solve technical issues. In the building of Destiny, Chris designed the electronics and electrical systems and created all the technical schematics for all onboard systems. Her to-do list since delivery includes setting up and commissioning our Maretron ships monitoring system as well as building a parts management, inventory and maintenance system (which is where those bar-coded baked beans comes in :))