Sunday October 2nd. 2nd edition: More new friends.

Written by Jack van Ommen on October 4th, 2016

It has been a busy weekend. I went to 9.30 mass to St. Joseph, just like last Sunday. This time it was a family mass with lots of children. Grade school kids read the reading, very well, and sang in a thirty or so children’s choir. It just warms my heart to see a standing room only congregation made up of so many ethnic backgrounds. The parish priest Rev. George Alengadan is from Kerala, India, co-celebrated today with a Chinese priest and a blue eyed deacon Matthew Murray who gave a wonderful homily to the children. The church has a great organ and their music director is an awesome organist.
dsc_0079 dsc_0083

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday afternoon Janneke Kuysters and her husband Wietze van der Laan came to Alameda to visit. I mentioned them briefly in my September 22nd blog. They are an amazing sailing couple. They are in their early/mid fifties. Gave up good careers to go sailing. They started out with a 31 foot steel multi chined boat. Did a circle tour of the North Atlantic and spent time in New York and down the ICW. Then in 2013 they purchased a Bruce Robert 44 foot boat in Spain and sailed from the Cape Verdes Islands to Salvador de Bahia in Central Brazil and followed the South American East Coast down and through the Beagle Channel and the southern tip of Argentina into Chile. Crossed to Easter Island, through the southern French Polynesian islands to Fatu Hiva in the Marquesas upto Hawaii and Alaska, down to British Columbia into the Puget Sound. Then I crossed their track on September 12th off Cape Flattery. They sailed 13,000 miles this last year. In the Atlantic in their 31 footer, they encountered a force 11 storm….. In the southern latitudes they often encountered force 8 and more.  Janneke writes bi-weekly in the on line “Zeilen”, ( go to: the most recent one) the most read Dutch on line sailing magazine and frequent writes articles in the monthly issue about their adventure. They also like to explore the hinterlands. They will keep “Anna Caroline” in Emeryville for the winter and plan a camper trip down the coast and there is a good chance we will meet up once again in Santa Barbara. Janneke is planning to publish one of her upcoming slots about their new Dutch-American friend and “SoloMan”. You can follow them on their Face Book page.

14444723_1846712518873516_1829885349726344227_o

Janneke and Wietze on "Fleetwood"

Janneke and Wietze on “Fleetwood”

On the subject of “SoloMan” and Holland, I have just published both the Color and Black and White print book with Boekenbestellen.nl at the same pricing as I had with Bol.com. So, this gives the Dutch readers an other option than buying at Amazon.de or Amazon.fr . You can now klick het winkelwagentje (shopping cart) directly on the www.SoloMan.nl web site.

I started the process with Pumbo.nl/Boekenbestellen.nl before my September 6th departure and now finally got it all done this morning.

Be sureto check out the very nice plug for “SoloMan” I received in “Latitude-38”, in this month’s Sightings on page 70.

I expect to leave Alameda on Friday. The weatherman predicts that the new high pressure area will last through the weekend. I am going to try and get as far as possible south with the accompanying favorable North West wind. Be sure to check in at the above de Lorme satellite tracking link and use your favorite AIS ship tracking app.

 

 

 

Comments are closed.