March, 2022

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Thursday, March 24 “Fleetwood III” ?

Thursday, March 24th, 2022

This morning my Dutch sailing friends, Janneke and Wietze on S/Y “Anna Caroline”, took a look at the prospective “Fleetwood III”. I put earnest money on it today and intend to negotiate a purchase on or around April 22nd with the seller in The Netherlands. You just cannot put that venerable “Fleetwood” title on a fiberglass or metal sailboat and as the progeny of Mastmakers and my lifelong career partners in the wood business they would puke at the thought. A few years ago there were a number of NAJAs, like Fleetwood I and II, for sale in Europe. Not anymore. The closest is this 30 foot/9 meter “Waarschip”, also produced as a kit like the NAJA. The main difference is the hull construction. The Naja 1/2″ thick plywood panels were edge, jointed on the chines and reinforced with stringers. The Waarschip hull is a lapstreak plywood panel construction, to give it longitudinal stiffness. This particular boat was built in 1980, just like my first “Fleetwood”. In my prejudiced opinion, wood has a longer lifespan than fibreglass, when kept in epoxy and two part primer and paint.

So say a prayer, or, for the few unbelievers, keep your fingers crossed that I’ll soon have my own roof over my head again for the next 15 years. I promise, no more shipwrecks. I learn the hardway. The Dutch saying is: “Een ezel stoot zich in’t gemeen geen twee keer aan de zelfde steen” (A donkey usually does not stumble twice on the same rock). Mine go in threes, X’s and Wrex’s. But my good news is tempered with the reality that these next 15 years may turn out to become a repeat of the first 15 years of my life, from 1937 to 1952, with another tyrant and destruction and a passive, clueless following enabling another genocide.

I have enjoyed my stay with my oldest daughter, Lisa, since my flight from Cuba, here in the Pacific North West. Yesterday, my granddaughter Corrine joined us here, with my #4 great-grandchild Spencer. They flew in for a short visit from Scotland. I look forward to spending the summer in Europe, probably cross the North Sea to Scotland, through the Caledonian Canal, to meet up with Corrine and family. Some of you may have met Corrine in Amsterdam in 2012/2013 when I was there moored at the Watersport Vereniging “De Schinkel”. She finished her Pacific Lutheran University studies at the UVA and then moved to Belgium where her Scottish fiancee finished his masters degree at the University of Louvain in 2014.

I also plan to make a train trip to Paris, in the first week of May to find a home for the 26 foot “Cormorant” sailboat as advertised in my blog: https://cometosea.us/?p=7325 If anyone is interested in this boat let me know and we can try put this together.

Time flies, the masks here went off on the 11th. So, it is now easier to get together with my old friends here. I hope to make some more appointments. Before the 20th of April. I am looking forward to the culmination of this pre-Easter season with my family and friends in the N.W.

It has been cold and rainy this month in the Nortwest but Spring is in the air. This picture is of the backyards of the street Lisa lives on in Federal Way, Wa.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wish everyone a meaningful and happy feast of the Resurrection.