About us

Binnenvaartcruises was founded in 2014 by Alex Mutsaars (1968).

In the summer of 1985 I sold lemonade out of a cooling box on the famous “Plage de Pampelonne” at Saint Tropez. Meanwhile I saw ships sailing by on the azure blue sea and I promised myself that one day I will be sailing on one of them! A fear years later this self-made promise came true. I went sailing for four summers along the Côte d’ Azur with a pimped English sailing yacht from the seventies. I taught myself how to sail, how to make a sailor’s knot and how to cast anchor.

Being a member of the (delivery) crew I spent lots of years on several big motor vessels and sailing vessels. From Scandinavia across the Irish Sea to the Island Mann and from Portugal across the Bay of Biscay. In 2002 I got the chance of sailing two by two with a classic motor vessel from Sint Maarten across the ocean back to The Netherlands. A whole month on the sea. On our way we made an even more ambitious plan: Biking the Ocean, that means crossing the ocean with a paddleboat.

Biking the ocean was eventually a project which has been keeping me busy for five years. With the support of about thirty sponsors an approximately eleven meter long ocean rowboat was provided with a recumbent bicycle drive and a bolted axis. In 2009 we “rode” in 107 days and media driven from Athens to Amsterdam.

I did not only travel on water but I also drove for half a year in a classical Volkswagen bus through Europe and with a 23 year old taxi from Antwerp through the Sahara to Gambia.

In 2011 I traveled with my girlfriend Wilma six months long through Asia by bike. I made experiences which I simply cannot summarize in a few sentences.

Going on this sort of independent trips is very exciting because you never know who you are going to meet, where you are going to sleep at night and because sometimes something can even go wrong. Trips which are characterized by special meetings and adventures make you ingenious, flexible and experienced. I used this ingenuity, flexibility and experience for founding this nautical travel organization.

To put it in a nutshell

We organize these unique experience trips with all our passion and love for adventures, trips and ships and together with a group of enthusiastic boatmen and shipping companies. Traveling on board of a freighter is much more different than normal tourism activities. Actually they are experience trips on which you will get to know the nautical world. Those trips are sometimes asking the traveler for flexibility, but anyway he will get lots of experience in return. Let yourself be surprised by our boatmen, go with them on a journey and return with a backpack full of inspiring stories! Welcome to the world of inland navigation!

We are always busy with expanding our great offer of wonderful trips. Furthermore we are also looking for new shipping companies and boatmen of freighters, tugboats and sailing yachts who are interested in working with us home and foreign.

Articles

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