Maybe Sailing

Dream sailing ship

‘Maybe’ is a traditional Dutch Ketch, built in 1929. Designed by her first owner, Jan Jacob van Rietschoten, as his dream sailing ship to sail around the world with the family. The ship was built at the famous shipyard of De Vries Lentsch in Amsterdam, as an incredibly safe and strong ship with a steel hull and teak finish, with a total length of 30 meters.

In the Second World War, she was hiding somewhere in the Netherlands in an abandoned area, far from the civilized world. After the war she was completely restored at the same yard where she was originally built. Then followed a long period of sailing trips with the Van Rietschoten family.

An important milestone was the first time she participated in the Tall Ships Race in 1956. In 1962 she was bought by a Swiss family, who brought her to the warmer regions of the Mediterranean. In the 70s she regularly crossed the Atlantic between the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. In 1980 she sailed even through the Panama Canal and along the East Coast of the United States and Canada.

MayBe was sold to its current owners in 1989. After major maintenance, she participated in the Tall Ships Races in the Baltic Sea in 2009 and followed regattas in 2010. In the winter of 2010/2011, the original rigging was restored. In the summer of 2015 she participated in SAIL Amsterdam 2015 and thus returned for a moment to her ‘place of birth’, but then under English flag!