Hi, we are Elisa and Mike, a couple in their 30s with two cats, Zosia and Rumba. We met in 2017 and sailed together on Mateńka across the atlantic and back. We think that life is too prescious to aquire a house, a mortgage and 2.5 kids – we would much rather live life to its fullest. We will never miss out on an adventure and plan on having many more on Mateńka while continuing to explore the world.
Elisa
Elisa spent a fair amount of her childhood on Mateńka visiting her dad on board. She started helping her sister to care for Mateńka after their dad passed away in 2008.
In 2016 she embarked on a mission to get Mateńka ready for another Atlantic crossing. Mateńka has been across the pond with her dad once, in 1987, and how to better commemorate her 30th anniversary on the water, than to take her back along the same route she sailed once before.
Elisa is a geek at heart and freelances as a Network and Software Engineer consulting on various large-scale network deployments.
Mike
Mike has been an avid sailor and instructor his entire life. He earns his living teaching sailing, skippering trips or doing boat deliveries.
He found out about Mateńka just before their departure for her second Atlantic crossing and joined them for what was supposed to be just the first part, just for a few weeks. Equipped with t-shirts for about a week, they left Gdańsk at the end of June 2017. He still sails and lives on Mateńka until today.
Zosia
Zosia is a shelter rescue, who has been very sick as a kitten. She’s doing great now but keeps having regular respiratory infections. She doesn’t jump a lot and when she does never very high. She only eats her favorite food and loves to come by for snuggles.
Rumba
Rumba is also a rescue, she was born in a barn and is a cat like the ones you know from internet memes. She will run around like crazy, knock things off the table, jump on everything, talk non stop and most of all, she will sweep everything off the floor.
We originally named her after the Roomba vaccum cleaner robots, but we spell it with a U instead.