Ninefoot
A STORY WORTH TELLING
OUR STORY
Ninefoot island casuals is inspired by the journeys and adventures of the Dutchman JP Elderman. A man with a great desire to discover the world and its hidden secrets. A passionate and adventurous man who lived a life in which plain and good food, a nice drink and plenty of friends to share it with have high priority. A way of life which became the Ninefoot state of mind.
In 1963, while diving off the coast of the Florida Keys, Elderman found the remains of a mammoth on a shoal named Ninefoot. More than ever convinced that the secret of the origin of the great mammoth is in South America, he decided to sail south with his ship the Caribbean Waves and a small but dedicated crew.
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His ship was last seen off the coast of Haiti in 1965 where local fishermen have seen divers climbing aboard the Caribbean Waves with, what looked like, the tusks off an elephant. From then on what happened remains a mystery but a fact is that nobody ever saw or heard anything of the Caribbean Waves and her crew again.
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That is, until 1999, when a man died of old age on the Mangrove Islands off the coast of Nicaragua. The only thing people knew about him was that he had suffered from amnesia and that no one had ever seen him before.
When the local police visited his hut, they found a big tusk and a wooden sign with the name Caribbean Waves. Unfortunately, it was never determined whether the dead man was Elderman or one of his crew members, but it is certainly a very intriguing story.
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Inspired by Elderman's sense of adventure, we decided to sail the same route and relive the same journey he made so many years ago. A journey which started in 1947 and eventually would lead him to the Florida Keys. A journey full of trails, visualized through a line of shirts, jacks and knitwear and inspired by the laid back mentality of John Elderman. And, of course, we took pride in choosing the mammoth, the animal Elderman so passionately tried to trace the history of, as our logo.
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