winny’s blog

While we were sailing the French were voting. Voting in a minor majority (53 against 47) for Sargozy.

At least he is 52. Chirac and Mitterand were 78 and 79 at the end. And although Sargozy is rightwing maybe his age will do some good at least. It’s a shame that the French missed such an opportunity to have some real changes. But this is all you may expect from a country that is this nationalistic I presume.
Here is an article in the Times.

Cleaning the Watermeid was not wasted at all. We had a wonderful trip today. It lasted at least twice as long as I had said it would be but luckily that was no a problem for the crew.
And also we had a very good captain as you can see, captain Boris.

And now the Watermeid is in Barendrecht, 5 hours sailing from the Entrepot Harbour (10 minutes by car). Waiting to be lifted out of the water. It so happens that she will be lifted in the afternoon. I cannot be there then because I’m at that very moment in the clinic where they are looking at my eyes. So I will go there on Tuesday to see that all will be fixed.

And although my cold was getting worse and worse during the day, that is my nose is running away by now, we had a very good day alltogether.

Here is a report about activities this year around Antigua. They say that the chance of hurricanes this year is greater then the past 50 years.

That will be exciting, won’t it?

The other day I was invited to have diner with my dear neighbours Yvonne and Marcel. He just had his new all in one phone from the shop. Also a HTC but the newest. Made a picture of me on their terras which is actually quite a good quality.

Way better than mine of the Watermeid this afternoon.

Tried to turn it but obviously I didn’t succeed. Please turn your head.

Been bussy all day cleaning my boat. After these last months, outside in wintertime, she was awfully dirty. It costs me the whole day only to clean the outside.

I made a picture with my phone when I was finished but it turned out to be a ‘moving’ picture. Bit blurred.
See for yourself. But believe me, she is very clean again.

Had to do it because tomorrow we are going to sail to Barendrecht, to the marina where she is lifted out of the water. The hull is being cleaned and they are trying to fix the leakages. That would be very nice because now the inside is wet if it rains. Very annoying.

Never known how special this stuff really is. Use it on board of course and the past years I learned that Paul is using it for practically everything on board but yesterday I looked at their website (Dutch).

From the website: What does WD-40 stand for?
WD-40 literally stands for Water Displacement, 40th attempt. That’s the name straight out of the lab book used by the chemist who developed WD-40 back in 1953. The chemist, Norm Larsen, was attempting to concoct a formula to prevent corrosion—a task which is done by displacing water. Norm’s persistence paid off when he perfected the formula on his 40th try.

Ant still the formula is secret, their are only 2 persons in the world who know exactly what it is made of.

Original it was used for, what’s in a name, water displacement. Soon it was found out to be very handy with all other means. See a long, long list of possible and proven use on the website.

Did you know this?

What does WD-40 do?
WD-40 fulfills five basic functions:

And I don’t have shares. Honestly.

Today was a big day for Joos en Wubbo Ockels. The ‘kiellegging’ (beginning of the making of the hull) of their very special version of the Grote Meid. A boat built, also by Gerard Dykstra, to support itself by making it’s own energie and using as less energie as possible. The Ecolution
(a Dutch website I’m affraid). Here you already can see some movies and pictures of this event (also Dutch, sorry).
Just last week Joos and Wubbo sailed the Classic with the Grote Meid. They were not only sailing the race but also measuring the whole ship and making comparisons. And talking all the time about how this or that must be at the Ecolution.

Where 2 worlds can be so different and so equal at the same time.

That’s the name of the yacht Graham is racing with. On the website of Tim Wright you can see pictures.

Today is lay day. That means no sailing and a lot of partying. But if you have seen or been to one party, you have seen them all. So that’s not something I’m going to miss. Racing is a whole other story ofcourse.
Yesterday the genoa, the big frontsail, tore at a seam. Right after the start. So there was no racing for the Mary Brown after all yesterday. The sailmaker fixed it and tomorrow they will start again.

Good luck guys!

And then Gueens Day today. What do you know. I’m home at once. The funniest thing happend this morning. I woke up at 9.30 am. Not yet very awake so I started with the television where our queen was arriving at Woudrichem (I should go there by boat as well, lovely little town surrounded by walls) in a boat, the ‘Helena’ of Rotterdam. The very boat I worked on this summer a couple of days. With Dick as captain, he is just behind the mast. Of course Bea (that’s her name, well, sort of) gave him a handshake when departing so I’m only one handshake away from our queen… Or, a girlfriend of mine put it different, I sat on the very same toilet as our queen.

While I am home since yesterday, Graham is racing with the Mary Brown in the Antigua Sailing Week.
A complete different happening then the very polite Classic we sailed last week (with the Grote Meid by the way. I did not mention the name of the boat).
So the second day in this race Graham and captain and crew are this very moment making a protest. That is not done in the Classic but in the sailing week it hapens all the time.

The results of the Mary Brown, a very nice Amel of 53 ft, are to be found in devision B on the results page (not yet published until now). Yesterday they became 8th or something out of 16 which is very good.

My flight was not to bad. Only hanging around at Gathwick for 5 hours was boring, very boring. But I slept most of the time. And even this past night I slept for 11 hours. Where that comes from???