I hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We have lots to be grateful for. This year it was one of the smallest gatherings other than during some of my ocean crossings. On Wednesday we grew from two to three with the addition of one of Lisa’s best friends whose husband was on duty on Thanksgiving. We usually have a much bigger gathering.

But it reminded me of 1971 when Lisa was 7 years old and the two of us went skiing that Thanksgiving weekend at Whistler Mountain, in British Columbia. I got sick on top of the mountain and had to take the chairlift down. This is one of the scariest memories. To sit in the double chair seats with only the bar keeping you from sliding out into the deep abyss of the downhill view to the valley, with a seven year old next to me. Going up mountain you can almost touch the nearest part of the earth. I immediately went under the sheets in the cabin and Lisa will never forget her 1971 Thanksgiving meal which consisted of a few crackers.

I arrived back in the Pacific N.W. on November 15th. Lisa, my oldest daughter, is my hostess once again. In my last blog of September 13th, I reported that I was going to be homeless from October 1st, since that is the end of the summer season at the Y.C. in Amsterdam where I am moored. I booked for the month of October in a marina where I was allowed to live aboard, north of Amsterdam. But just before my departure, the club sanctioned my stay aboard until November 1st. I stayed those last two weeks mostly with my sister.

The mast was reset on November 5th. I managed to clean the boat up of all the tools, paints and expoxies to be able to add some pictures to my For Sale add. Take a look. https://cometosea.us/?page_id=7922 The price is right. This your opportunity to have your own home for that trip you planned for years, to see all of Europe, from the water at your leasure. Enough room for a family of five and share it with another family for the rest of the season.  I saw more than 20 European countries that way in 2010-2013. Read all about it on this blog for those years. I am selling the boat because it is not fit to cross oceans but perfect for the Dutch inland waters and European coastal and Med summer sailing. Moorage is paid up through March 31st. I plan to be back on March 28th to take your money and give you the key.

I have found an excellent lawyer to help recover all or at least a good part of the expense of the three summers hard work to repair the hidden defects. If any enthusiast of my forced labor efforts is interested in the pictures of my accomplishment and the extent of the deceipt I can send you the google drive link to the three slide shows of the three summers work. I made these and have a crate of monsters in case it comes to a court hearing. If the seller were smart he’d avoid this but I wonder how anyone, in a sane mind, could expect to get away with this crime.

The search is on for “Fleetwood IV” I plan to check a few boats this week, now that I finally have a phone number here again, as of today. But most likely the East Coast will be where I’ll end up with # IV. More hoice for the type of boat I’m looking for. My first choice is another NAJA like my first and 2nd Fleetwood. There are two of the 4 Naja kits I imported in in 1980 unaccounted for. #3 was last seen, a few years ago, in  the Pender Harbour area on the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia. #4 was built by a Sacramento School teacher, who, I was told, sold it to a San Diego sheriff around 1990. But this week I happened to come across an old post from the, apparent, real second owner in the Sacramento area, by the name Ronaldo. But so far no further trace found. I may have to prostitute my self and the Fleetwood title and join the grownup sailors on tupperware boats.

Last Saturday I was able to meet up with my Cate-Ring friends who served their last 160 plus meals at the Night Watch shelter in Seattle. Cate and Gabe Lichten and their helpers are continuing their 5 Star meal service in Tacoma, which is closer to home.

I anticipate to be visiting friends in Northern Washington State and the Vancouver area. If I can make the appoitments on short notice, now that I finally have my telephone service. Next to see my friends in Eugene, son in Roseburg, Oregon and Las Vegas. I might be back to where I am now, after Christmas, with a possibility to use Lisa’s condo while she visits her daughter and family in Warsaw. Then, depending on the boat shopping prospects, I’ll fly to Virginia to spend time with family and friends until my departure to Amsterdam on March 27th.

If you are on my mailing list that I will, as usual, send out today as well, you will have my new US telephone number. If you are not on the mailing list and want the number send me an e-mail to vanommenjack@gmail.com   For Whatsapp, please, continue to use my Dutch number starting with 31-649……

Now, I can start trying to recover my Outlook e-mails that disappeared into a black hole on June 5th. There is still one problem that I had not foreseen. In order to re-open the account Micro Soft needs to send a code to my old cell phone number that I should have been able to re-open on arrival on November 15. After many phone calls and bad directions from the the two previous services, I discovered, by calling my old number on Sype that it was recently reassigned to someone else. Wish me luck that I can change my old to the new phone number.