winny’s blog

Uit de NRC van vandaag:

Duizenden op de vlucht voor Felix .
In de Midden-Amerikaanse landen Honduras en Nicaragua zijn dinsdag duizenden mensen op de vlucht geslagen voor de orkaan Felix. Inwoners van Puerto Cabezas in Nicaragua halen hun bezittingen van het strand, nu orkaan Felix eraan komt. De tropische storm raast met windsnelheden tot 240 kilometer per uur richting de Caribische kust van beide landen. Daarmee valt Felix in klasse vier, de op één na hoogste categorie van de zogeheten Saffir & Simpson-schaal voor orkanen. De president van Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, riep de bevolking op alle noodzakelijke voorzorgsmaatregelen te treffen. Ongeveer 40.000 mensen zochten hun toevlucht in speciale schuilkelders voor orkanen. Door gebrek aan benzine konden circa 15.000 personen niet worden geëvacueerd. De autoriteiten vrezen een herhaling van de catastrofe in 1998 door de orkaan Mitch, waardoor ongeveer 10.000 slachtoffers vielen. Het Amerikaanse orkaancentrum NHC in Miami verwacht dat het oog van Felix in de loop van de ochtend (Nederlandse tijd) het vasteland van Honduras bereikt. Het Wereldvoedselprogramma van de Verenigde Naties (WFP) liet weten dat voedselvoorraden zijn opgeslagen, waarmee gedurende een maand in de behoefte van ongeveer 600.000 mensen kan worden voorzien. (ANP)

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This picture is a try out for a RSS feed.
If you want to know if there are new posts on this blog without opening the internet everytime, you can copy the link in a feedreader. Also comes in very handy for your newsitems.

Now I have to find out how I get this in the sidebar on this website.

Update: I did it. In the sidebar you find ‘feeds’. Without the logo but that’s because it looks better to me.

Yesterday I was skyping with Paul. Which was pretty weird because he was in the middle of hurricane Felix. This is what the NRC says about it in Dutch: “Felix passeerde Curaçao overigens op circa 90 kilometer afstand. Volgens het KNMI is het niet eerder gebeurd dat een orkaan zo dicht langs dat eiland raasde. (ANP)”

So during all this wind violence he was telling me (skype chat) that he almost was crashing against the isle nearby. And that the couldn not go anyhere else because they were not able to get the ancor up. The generator broke down right that very moment. And that is needed for power for the electric ancor winch.

So the only thing that was left was power up the motor to stay away from the shore. In the mean time the wind was blowing with 40 to 60 nautical miles per hour, that is roughly 70 to 110 km/ph. with very strong lightning above there head.

In the mean time I was preparing for the big dinner downstairs because of the tenth aniversery of our building. Pincoffs reveald by some official, lots of people, and a very good diner with nice people and even a belly dancer.

Never had such an astranging experience before. I was happy to know that when I went downstairs, the wind was calming down and they were able to get coffee on the Grote Meid.

which of course I don’t want to withhold from you.

If I only had knew… now I had a bad hair day.

Today was the day of the return of our founding father Pincoffs. His statue was been removed for repairing the square, two years ago. But now, to be revealed on september the second, back in place again.

He came today, lying on his back.

The entrepreneurs in the Entrepot building where I live, are trying to upgrade the area and of course to attract more costumers. So they had a publicity activity yesterday. Robert Doornbos, Robert who? was here to be interviewd. Here he stands in front of the Entrepotbuilding.

And here you see him on the Watermeid. That was a unexpected pleasure. He is a very pleasant young man and I got to sail a bit in the harbour while he was being interviewd for TVRijnmond. For the tenth time that day I think, and still being nice to people and signing autographs for the children.

I think the interview is being braodcasted tomorrow about 5 pm.

Although it’s already a couple of days ago, I’m showing here some pictures of last weekend.
Paul was still here (back to Curacao now) and he wanted to see one of Wubbo’s projects in execution. Making energie with kites.

And of course I don’t want to miss that too. So we went to Groningen, the very northern part of the Netherlands, where students were doing some experiments.

The kite is fixed to a truck and steerd by remote controll. It is far more efficient in making energie than a windmill.
Read more in this Dutch article

We stayed overnight in a hotel that was very luxurious and completely in style of the time the buildings were build, with very pritty details and, conveniently, a whirlpool the size of a footballfield.

On my way back home (Paul stayed in the aria) on Sunday, I visited my brother and his family.

Aren’t they pretty? My two lovely nieces.

The pictures yesterday were made with Google Earth, everybody knows that by now. But there is something new build in; the universe.

If you go to a destination on the earth, Entrepot Harbour for example, and then click on the sky button in Google Earth, this is what you see. That is, what you might see if the sky was very clear and there were no lights in the neighbourhood.

On this beautiful day I have been sailing to Brielle. Very old town and a good day trip.
It took us about three hours to get there. Through a lock, to prevent the tide from the Maas to go in.

Brielle is recognised by its specific tower without a point.

Picture this, Briele 2007. Adjusting the ropes of your boat and bending down to do that. And where do you think your glasses end up? Down indeed, in the water between rampart and ship.

Ok, no big deal, they have shops in Briele and they do sell glasses. So fifteen minutes later it was fixed, I could read again, so let’s just forget about the whole thing….

And so, arriving back home, in the marina in Rotterdam, I again forgot about my glasses en yes, the new ones, the ones I had used for only 3 hours, are at the bottom of the Entrepot Harbour.

When you’re over forty you need an optical divice, is there also something for shrinking brains?