June 24th, 2010

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June 24. Around Hoorn again

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

The only other witness who had witnessed against Sonja van Hesteren, see previous blog, Klarie Smeenk is still alive. She is 91. I am trying to visit her. She might be able to answer more of my long lingering questions.

I left Monnickendam after 6 p.m. and put the anchor down here in Hoorn at 9 p.m. A gorgeous sail, hard on the wind at hull speed with full main and 140% genoa. I love travelling the oceans but as far as sailing thrills are concerned this is as good as it gets, on smooth water sailing at hull speed and then spending the night in a historic medieval port city from where famous seafarers started their discovery voyages and found the westward route to the South Pacific. 

Summer has finally arrived. It is in the seventies with a perfect refreshing sailing breeze. I’d like to keep going but I have my external hard drive being checked at the lap top doctor here and it will not be done till late afternoon.  I lost all my “Word for Windows” files from the external hard drive. Besides losing all the files on the HP laptop, in Vietnam last February. I got the bad news on the HP laptop as well today, while I stopped by at the shop here in Hoorn where I had left it 6 weeks ago.  They tried to take parts from a good identical hard drive and then interchange them on my busted hard drive. It did notwork. This was the fifth attempt, after Saigon, San Francisco, Tacoma, Tampa and for the time being the last attempt until I win the lottery and can afford to take it to the geeks in the white coats and green bonnets. So, all the good pictures of my Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos travels, my e-mails, word processing files from November till March are gone. We all have access to the pictures I sent in these blog updates from that period but they are in a smaller format. And I did the one photo album of the colors of Vietnamese Lunar New Year. 

Every Thursday there is a Cheese Market here on the main square in Hoorn. This is a reenactment of the old traditions. The cheese carriers have this special fast dribble when they carry the gurneys to keep their loads level.

I’ll stay here one more night and then take off for de Lemmer or Lelystad depending on the wind direction. This evening I get to meet Cees Jongens who lives in Hoorn and just returned from Costa Rica where e left “Lyra” till the end of the hurricane season. “Lyra” is one of the few other boats that also made a stop in Nha Trang, Vietnam in 2008 as I did in 2006.