I’m no longer a stranger in Jerusalem. The town folks recognize me from yesterday’s front page article.

I tagged along in the Thursday evening race series, held from May through September in the harbor. Sheila Schultz, the shutterbug of the GHYC and local events, took a couple good shots of FW under sail and one from Ken Emmes who, with his wife Christine, were visitors for the last two nights at the Arabella Landing Marina, on “Moonlight”. They are from Eugene,Oregon. My first question to them was: “Do you know Evert Slijper?” They sure do. Ken went through UPS here with Evert. I met Evert in Eugene in 1972. You might remember that I spent the first three months of this year house-sitting the home he grew up in, in Haarlem. Ken mentioned that a few years ago they were at Evert’s home and a friend of Evert showed a slide show of his trip through the European waterways. “You are looking at him” I said. Blame it on our summer tans and uniforms that neither recognized the other at first. Just to show you how small the world is and how much Evert gets around. Evert and the Emmeses are active Thistle sailors and there are a number of families in Gig Harbor and Tacoma sailing Thistles and frequently met each other here and in Eugene and they will never forget their first experience meeting Evert at a meet in Port Townsend. Evert went missing for the first race day. He went out early in the morning for a practice run and, fresh from Holland, still unfamiliar with the strong currents in Admirality Inlet, he was swept out into the Strait of San Juan de Fuca.  Shortly after I had been welcomed to the “De Schinkel” yacht club in Amsterdam in 2009, Evert came to look me up. And I was surprised to find out that he was a familiar face there as well. He and his brother Dirk regularly show the “Schinkelaars” their sailing skills in the 17 foot “Vrijheid” class, of which there is a 12 to 15 boat fleet in this club. Another link that Evert has with Gig Harbor is that he studied with Pete Stanley, the owner of the landmark Tides Tavern here, at Nijenrode in Holland and at UPS in Tacoma.

In the below uncropped picture that Ken Emmes took you’ll see the same Dog Paddeler who appears in the last picture of the previous blog. I wonder if he ever went home after Tuesday night. Both he and his dog are still wearing the same uniforms.