And a memorable one it will remain. Sailing the Ijselmeer and Friesland and later the Veght and Rhine. The retracing of family roots with “Fleetwood” in de Lemmer and Urk and the visit of Jeannine and Gabrielle, particularly showing Jeannine her roots in Belgium. Then the Danube.

The storm has blown away and it is dead calm again on the Danube. The picture below shows the exposure I had. The “D” in “Fleetwood”, on the starboard topside,  has been rubbed off by the steel wire mooring cable.

Mario, the mechanic, brought the engine head back and managed to extract the one injector from it. I am running out of projects on the boat. I wired the 12 volt fan, with a toggle switch in it,  that I had bought before my North Atlantic crossing. Today I mounted the last roll of toilet paper that my crew insisted we needed for the 12 day crossing from the Azores in early July 2009… I am not sure what his problem was.  But thanks anyway! The other inexhaustible supply is my propane. I have been expecting to run out for the last three months. There is no gauge to check. The 11 k.g. tank was filled in mid August, last year and I have been cooking, washing dishes etc. for eight months.

I started reading “Met een Glimlach Rond de Wereld” by Cees de Reus. My cousin Connie gave this to me last fall. He and his wife circumnavigated part of the same places that I visited and they met also several of the same sailors I ran into. The book does not give the period, it was published in 2009. I figure that they were in the South Pacific just a few weeks behind me in 2005 or possibly a year earlier. It brings back many great memories. I like his attitude and writing style.