Hans

Sailing has been part of my life

since I was about 5 years old

My Background & History:

I was born and raised in the Netherlands. After the usual schooling I acquired a degree in Electronics, which at the time consisted of a lot of theory about Valves and a bit about the new thing: Transistors. In 1974 I was drafted into the Dutch army, where I became a sergeant in UHF communications.

In 1977 I started in an electronics company servicing and installing medical electronics and hospital patient systems. I also did Fire alarms, CCTV systems, wireless call systems etc. Shortly after that computers entered the scene and this is where I got involved with computers. It was new for our company and being one of the youngest engineers with some experience from hobbies, I picked up the computer part very quickly, and never looked back.

In 1980 I was part of a new start-up with 5 people providing third party computer maintenance in competition with the manufacturers on Digital Equipment computers. After 8 years we had grown to 150 people. At that time I was responsible for training new engineers and was also the "last resort" for problems in the field.


In 1987 we, my wife Jeannette and I, sailed away in our home built fibreglass 34Ft yacht to New Zealand. After a great time, and 2 years later, we arrived in New Zealand. When we arrived in 1989, there were few jobs in computers. I finally got one as "Service Manager" in a small computer company in Auckland. There I learned about "PC's", something I never encountered before, but found it was just more of the same, just on a different scale. I was the only service person there.

The small company was bought out by a big computer company after about 3 years. Here I evolved to manage 12 engineers by the time I left in 1995. Again I ended up as the "last resort" person.
In 1995 I felt there must be more to life and we started a flower growing business. At the same time I started doing contract jobs in the IT industry. That eventually proved far more profitable than growing flowers, so computers it was again. In 1999 we moved to Bay of Islands. There we did various forms of farming, which is my wife's passion, while I was still going to Auckland for several days a week for computer work.

In 2004 I started rebuilding a Van Der Stadt 46Ft yacht, built in New Zealand in kauri. (Please check the link to the yacht to see all the fun!) In 2009 we sold the farm and sailed around the Pacific for 4 years, in which we eventually logged 26000 miles, before returning to Opua at the end of 2012.

Back in New Zealand we moved onto dry land again. I did several odd jobs, some yacht deliveries but could not decide what to do next. I started working for Cater Marine in Opua, first doing rigging and later moving into marine electronics. In 2018 I decided that I wanted to spend the last few working years of my life working for myself, still doing marine electronics, but having the option to move into professional sound systems as well. This has been one of my hobbies all my life. (I sold my first home built guitar amplifier when I was 16.)

In Summary

My knowledge of marine electronics is a direct follow-up from the computer business. Plotters and fish finders are computers, dedicated to a simple task. The networking part, connecting them all together, is straight computer technology. Because of my background in electronics, computers and boat building, I am able to see solutions for problems where a marine electrician, who has no experience in for example network concepts, often will not.
I am a Raymarine dealer, and can get you the best deals. I have been involved with Vesper Marine since their early days. I have a relationship with Furuno, through Furuno New Zealand. I have worked on satellite communications, satellite TV, SSB and VHF systems.

So please contact me for any of your requirements, either marine electronics, sound systems or anything else interesting!