Two years 'fred-around-the-world

We are celebrating Fred's 2 year anniversary travelling around the world - who would have thought?

Exactly 2 years ago, on July 30th, 2010, Fred's voyage started on the container vessel "Euro Squall". Since then he is travelling on ships and is being passed on from crew to crew.

Fred has travelled many thousand miles, starting in Europe, he has been in the Mediterranean, crossed the Atlantic, visited South America went up the west coast to New York and back south. He again crossed the Atlantic and travelled far north to the Arctic Sea. In his luggage he brought back home nice stories and beautiful pictures.

The reunion was celebrated on board the 100 year old steam tug "Tiger" together with the NDR TV-Team, which made a nice report about Fred and his adventures...

Infected with the travel bug, Fred soon was on his way to Spain. He then crossed the Atlantic again to Colombia, celebrating Christmas and New Year's Eve at sea. From Colombia he passed the Panama-Canal, crossed the Pacific Ocean, visited New Zealand and Australia and then Singapore and Hong Kong and he is still going strong!

Resulting from a spontaneous idea, this travel-project has become a nice collection of reports and many hundreds of pictures from all around the world, with many people from all kind of nations from all over the world taking part. We are quite proud, because this now really is an 'international project'.

Many times we have been asked which idea stands behind this project. Some people presumed, that maybe we wanted to point out the extremely difficult situation of seamen, others asked about the 'message'... etc. The ultimate aim is just fun. Fun to everybody taking part and of course to us. We believe that we have succeeded. Fred has a lot of fans on facebook and very loyal fans, which send mails and regularly write into Fred's guestbook.

And because of this two year anniversary, we have arranged a limited edition of Fred pins and are giving away 25. If you want to win such a pin, just take part on our small quiz at:

/quiz.php

Fred's 'mom' is also proud of her famous offspring, and sent us a few lines:

"We were quite suspicious when the makers of 'Fred-around-the world' contacted our small manufactory here in Sonneberg/Germany and told us about the idea sending a mascot around the world. A small cuddly toy with a life-jacket travelling across the oceans? Actually we had thought that this mascot would leave Hamburg and then soon disappear.

But we liked the idea and started thinking about how this figurehead could look like. Now we must say, choosing a suricate, a very likeabl efellow like Fred was a good idea. He is quite impressive with his life-jacket, is greatly liked and everybody is taking good care of him and even grown men pampered him touchingly and showing the world to him.

Here in Sonneberg we are now always sitting at our computers and are looking forward to see, where Fred is and on which route he is travelling. Sometimes we were worried, because we did not hear from him for a while, but after all he always appeared again.

We would like to say thank you to all people taking care of Fred and a accompanying him on his adventures. Because of Fred, even we who live here in a mountainous country, get to know a little bit about seafaring and the big wide world.

We wish Fred all the best in the future and that he will have much fun and enjoy his adventures.

We would like to say thank you to Fred's team for this nice idea and for the good cooperation. They always let us know, if there are any news from Fred.

SOWEMA
Gudrun Hentschel

We would like to go along with the request from Sonneberg. We would also welcome more beautiful pictures and interesting stories from all over the world for all of Fred's fans and for ourselves. Thank you to all who are following Fred's adventures and to all who already took part in this project, by taking care of Fred or helped to realise this idea.

Best regards from Northern Germany

Axel Will and Martin Leuschner