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Nike Steiger | BOATLIFE | SAILING | OCEAN CONSERVATION

@nikesteiger

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slow traveling water nomad sharing the joy & challenges of crafting a fulfilled life. Protecting our Oceans @inmoceanorg
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I need your emotional support tonight, pleeeease! 🥹

This is a huge step for me, one I have postponed again and again because sharing this new path feels incredibly vulnerable.

But tonight, it’s finally time to begin this new chapter of my life on YouTube. It would mean the world to me if you joined me for the premiere at 5 pm UTC / 7 pm CEST. 💗 (link in bio)

Sending out lots of love and rusty smiles and I really hope to see you there tonight! 🥂

#RootsOnWater #CanalBoatLife #DutchBarge #SteelBoat #waterwoman by @nikesteiger

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3 months ago

I did not see it coming!

⛵️🌊🛠️

Most important lesson of the past ten years:

Don’t let other people’s fears of leaving their comfort zone guide your path.

Be bold. Be wild. Be YOU!

I will be here cheering you on!

Tag someone who needs to hear this 🫶🏽

#untiethelines #doyou #diygirl #lifelessons by @nikesteiger

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a year ago

Curious. Chaotic. Adaptable. That’s me: Nike.

During an icebreaker a few weeks ago, someone asked me to describe myself in three words. These are the ones I chose and they feel like a good way to (re)introduce myself here.

In 2013, I left my office job in Hamburg, bought an old sailboat in Panama, and set off on a journey that would challenge me in every possible way. My boat “Karl” became both my home and my teacher. From endless repairs to figuring out how to sail him solo, every day was a lesson in persistence, patience, and problem-solving.

But this journey turned into more than just adventure. It became a path of self-discovery, growth, and purpose. Faced daily with plastic pollution, I started the nonprofit @inmoceanorg with my friend Maria. We are a fleet of boats to raise awareness about plastic pollution and build grassroots recycling solutions in coastal communities. It’s been another steep learning curve, one that feels deeply meaningful.

I’ve recently started creating a more stable base. In 2024, I bought a 100-year-old steel canal boat. I’m rebuilding her from the metal hull up, a floating home rooted close to my family. A bit of stability, for a life that is mostly on the move.

Two thirds of my voyage, I sailed solo. Sometimes I had crew join for a few weeks, sometimes a couple of months. I met countless amazing people along the way, many of whom made it possible for me to keep going. But I always returned to solitude. That changed when I fell in love at first sight in 2022. Boga, my salty furball, has been by my side ever since. I can't imagine life without her.

And just to make things even more complex, there’s now another boat in the mix. In the winter of 2024, I set sail on my partner @flohjoe boat SV Santana, from the Med toward the Canary Islands, and hopefully soon to the Cape Verdes. We’ve had many long talks about how all of this might work, and honestly, we’re still figuring it out. But I believe that if your heart is set on something, there’s always a way.

If you’re new here: welcome! If you’ve been around for a while: thank you for sharing this rollercoaster ride with me. Continue in comments 💙 by @nikesteiger

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a year ago

Ever wondered what happens when you almost double your boat size? 🙃

I recently hauled out Anna Maria, my still fairly new-to-me, 21-metre, 100-year-old steel barge. Here are five things that were VERY different from boatyard life with my 11-metre sailboat KARL:

1. “Can you lift my boat?” became a very different question.
46 TONS!!! Finding a crane is one thing. Finding yard space is another. Prices are high, flexibility is low, and when commercial vessels need the space, my floating-home project isn’t exactly first in line.

2. Boat yoga reached a new level.
KARL’s twin keels gave me some practice working underneath a boat. But Anna Maria’s huge flat bottom, about 60 cm above the ground? That’s some intense core training whilst grinding and painting.
And after four hours in those positions, looking up and thinking: “Wait… that’s ALL I’ve done?!”

3. Rust and I are getting VERY well acquainted now.
KARL is aluminium. Anna Maria is steel. De-rusting the rub rail around roughly three quarters of her outline felt like my arms got longer every day. Trying different tools taught me something valuable: there’s no single “best” solution, only the best one for a particular job. I had plenty of metres to practise on. 😅

4. Everything. Costs. More.
By the metre. By the litre. By the “oh, I’ll need another bucket.”
Discovering paint supplies for commercial vessels helped my purse breathe a little. Apparently, she needed that as much as I did.

5. I’m a newbe again.
After five haul-outs and three times drying KARL out, I know his routine, paint layers and quantities. With Anna Maria, I calculated, estimated, tried new paints, worked out anodes… and crossed (well, still crossing) my fingers. Time will tell how well I did.

Some days I’m exhausted and wondering what the heck I’ve done. Then I see a freshly painted patch and stand there grinning from ear to ear.

If you also tend to bite off more than you can chew, welcome to the club. We can question our decisions while admiring our progress. And if you are team "I told you so!": you did. I did not listen. My heart seems to have a very effective spam filter for sensible warnings.
#BoatWoman #BoatRefit #KeepLearning taken in Marina Baltica by @nikesteiger

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11 days ago

Trash doesn’t suddenly become a problem when it reaches the ocean.

For World Cleanup Day @worldcleanupday.global, we spent two days at the LUV Center Lübeck looking at the journey of waste from different perspectives:

what ends up along the Trave, what sinks to the bottom of the Baltic Sea, why something as small as a cigarette butt can threaten our water, and what can happen when plastic is collected and used again instead of being treated as worthless.

And then, on Sunday, we took that conversation outside.

Together with 43 people a total of 137.5 kg of trash and an incredible 17,166 cigarette butts were collected around the LUV Center.

But what stayed with us most were the conversations, questions and connections that happened around it.

A huge thank you to Daniel from @__seanoise__ and Judith @luv_shopping for initiating and making these two days possible, for giving environmental education a visible space in the middle of everyday life, and for bringing so many different people and perspectives together.

Thanks as well to everyone who joined from @trashheroluebeck, Stefan @ostseereiniger, Jens and everyone who stopped, asked questions, joined one of our @inmoceanorg workshops or came out into the rain to collect with us.

World Cleanup Day may last one day.

But hopefully the questions we take away from it stay with us much longer:

Where does our waste go? What can we prevent? And what can we do differently before it ever reaches our rivers and oceans?

#WorldCleanupDay #CleanLübeck #PlasticPollution #OceanProtection #EnvironmentalEducation taken in LUV Shopping by @nikesteiger

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14 days ago

Joking, but not joking… 😄

If you’re free this Wednesday or Thursday, happen to be around Lübeck/Travemünde and feel like chipping away some rust, drop me a message!

There’ll be cold drinks, a BBQ in the evening and even a pool at the marina, if that’s your kind of thing.

So… who’s joining me in the rust battle this week? ⚒️

#Helpneeded #tooltime #steelboat #rustbusting #withalittlehelpfrommyfriends by @nikesteiger

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2 months ago

Some people buy jewellery.

I put 40-year-old hose clamps in an ultrasonic bath and make them sparkly again. ✨

Did you guess the ending?

#boatyard #girlsjustwannahavefun #bling #boatrefit #whatwomenwant

Steel boats
Plumbing system
Boat refit
Women with Tools
Boat restauration by @nikesteiger

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2 months ago

When the spotlight hits and the playlist drops a 70s classic halfway through dismantling your living space… 🎤🔧

Tag someone who can’t help but sing along.

#BoatRefit #DutchBarge #DIYBoatRenovation #BoatLife #70smusic taken in Marina Baltica by @nikesteiger

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2 months ago

So satisfying! Who knows the feeling? 🐚

#DoItYourself #GetShitDone #WomenDoingCoolStuff #BoatYard #DutchBarge taken in Marina Baltica by @nikesteiger

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2 months ago

It’s my last day in the berth. Tomorrow, my 100-year-old steel barge Anna Maria is going into a massive lift and a whole new phase of this refit begins.

I’ve hauled out my sailboat Karl plenty of times over the past ten years. In all kinds of places, in all kinds of ways. Some of them were rather sketchy. But this is different.

I don’t have a haul-out routine for this ship yet. There is still so much I’m about to discover: her rudder bearing, stern tube and propeller setup, the pipes for the closed engine-cooling circuit. I don’t even know what kind of paint is hiding beneath the waterline.

So here I am, sitting with my checklist, feeling that familiar mixture of nervousness and excitement that comes with stepping beyond what I know.

To me, nervousness doesn’t mean I doubt myself. It means I’m paying attention. It means this matters. It means I’m about to learn something new.

I’ve dealt with plenty of boat jobs under far less favourable circumstances. This time, I’ll be in a yard with tools, help and everything I need close at hand. Whatever I find beneath the waterline, I trust myself to work through it. One problem, one decision and one rusty surprise at a time.

This isn’t routine yet. It’s an adventure. And perhaps that’s exactly what makes me feel so alive.

Yard time, here we come!

How do you experience that nervous excitement when you’re about to do something for the first time?

#DutchBarge #BoatRefit #diyboatprojects #LifeOnTheWater #RootsOnWater taken in Lübeck, Germany by @nikesteiger

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2 months ago

For a few days, thousands of people come together in Travemünde (Germany) because they love sailing and spending time by the sea.

We believe that loving the sea goes hand in hand with protecting it.

That's why, together with @trashheroluebeck, @inmoceanorg and @plasticfisherman_germany, we'll be part of this year's Travemünder Woche.

💛 11:00–13:30 – Join Daniel and his crew from @trashheroluebeck for a clean-up and help remove litter before it can harm marine life.

Afterwards, the cigarette butts collected during the clean-up will become part of the "Save the Dorsch" artwork, led by Dagmar from @plasticfisherman_germany, making visible how even the smallest pieces of litter add up to a big threat.

♻️ 14:00–16:00 – Sailing Vlogger @nikesteiger will set up a pop-up recycling hub with @inmoceanorg where you can transform plastic waste into useful everyday items. Because when we start seeing plastic as a resource instead of rubbish, we take an important step towards keeping it out of nature in the first place.

This is where you can find us:
📍 Galerie Hafenpanorama
Vorderreihe 51a
23570 Travemünde

No registration needed, just come by, get inspired, get creative, and spend a day with people who believe that caring for our oceans can be just as much fun as enjoying them.

We look forward to see you there!

#protectwhatyoulove #oceanconservation #travemünderwoche #iaminmocean #actforouroceans taken in Travemünder Woche by @nikesteiger

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3 months ago

Sometimes, meaningful collaborations begin with a curious conversation.

When @inmoceanorg founder @nikesteiger sailed into the bolongs of Lamin in The Gambia with @flohjoe, they connected with Fanta and Fato, who both run small food shacks next to Lamin Lodge.

One afternoon, Nike noticed Fato’s beautiful necklace made from oyster shell. Fato @fato.umata668 shared the story of the Oyster Ladies: women who collect and sell oysters from the mangroves during the short season, and craft jewelry from the shells during the quieter months.

That story felt closely connected to the work we do with In Mocean.

Looking at what is already there. Recognizing value in local materials. Creating something with skilled hands.

Nike shared what In Mocean does with plastic recycling and two days later, the first of a series of workshops took shape.

Together, the ladies turned plastic waste into colourful jewelry pieces, experimenting with the colours of the Gambian flag. And our activities sparked curiosity in the community. People stopped by, asked questions, watched the process and one of the first pieces was even sold.

Similar to sailing in remote areas, not everything went smoothly 🤭. Our “recycling machine” aka panini press needed more power than the local solar system could provide that day. So the group adapted, switched to an iron, and carried on.

It was beautiful that Sally also stopped by, who had already learned plastic upcycling with our fleet member Sonja and Niels from @sailingzerowaste last year. Another thread connecting this work locally.

This is what community-based plastic recycling can look like: Starting with what is already alive in a place.
 Listening. Adapting. Learning and laughing together.

We are excited to see how the story of the Oyster Ladies in The Gambia continues to unfold. Stay tuned for more.

#communitywork #iaminmocean #fromtrashtotreasure #upcycling #upcyclingplastic taken in Lamin Lodge by @nikesteiger

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3 months ago