Wicher Sends Another Message

Wicher accepted my request for more pictures and came up with a wealth of treasures for us. The following text is from Wicher, and he is right, we are so busy, but we still want desperately to remain in touch. Thanks, once again Wicher, Sonja en Family, from 'overhere'. ...Hans...


Hello Hans and family,

Just a few weeks ago I did react at some issues at your weblog. I noticed you responded immediately. That's because we are both very busy with our things at home and work, but we still want to keep in touch with each other. At last that is how I feel it. You made a still hint for some more pictures. Well I did my best and selected some for you.

Foto 1 till Foto 4 are pictures of the sloep. The one I build together with my dad. At picture 2 you can just see the engine box. There's a one cylinder Volvo Penta on board from 1973. He's about 7 HP.

Foto 1

Foto 2

Foto 3

Foto 4

Foto 5 till Foto 9 are pictures around the house. You can see the garden house which I build by myself out of rest (restored or recycled) material. It is now in use for our bicycles. We have so many now that there wasn't enough place in the garage.

Foto 5

Foto 6

Foto 7

Foto 8

Foto 9

Foto 10 till Foto 13 are some family pictures. Made on vacation in the car. A portrait of the boys in the backyard of my mother-in-law. The other ones are made by Wesley; that's why he isn't at them.

Foto 10

Foto 11

Foto 12

Foto 13

Foto 14 - Guess who's that??

Foto 14

Foto 15 is at our house with Julian, Sonja and (his sister) Margreet.

Foto 15

Foto 16 is one we made this weekend. This is the picture out of we make our Christmas cards.

Foto 16

At least, Foto 17 is one I made last year for the technicians among us. We travelled at our vacation through Germany as I made this picture of a steam locomotive of a museum railroad.

Foto 17

Thanks for the pictures Wicher, it shows us how much we miss you and the family and how fast our children are growing up, as we are growing old.

Second Voyage On The Sailboat

We took the sailboat back out with the thought of launching her at Davis Island boat ramp, but when we got there, there was this mean looking oyster 'reef' that was sticking up across the width of the ramp, as you can see in this picture. After watching the speed boats wrestle with missing the oysters in such shallow water, we decided it wasn't going to be possible to get the sailboat into the water from this ramp without possibly damaging her.

Instead, we drove back over to the Gandy Bridge ramp and launched her there. The rigging was faster this time, only taking about 30 minutes to complete.

Here's a little change we made to the boat to make it easier to handle. We replaced the factory bronze cleats with a pair of cam cleats that are mounted on swivels so the jib sheets could be changed over faster during a tack. I have to admit, this change was worth it, because we tacked for 1/2 an hour on our way back the ramp and we didn't blow one of them. We're getting a little better at this...

So, after the rigging was done, we eased her in... You can see the coupling system for the trailer extension in action in this shot.

After launching, the girls started staking out their favorite spots.

We didn't set the sails immediately because the wind was low, so we motored over to Picnic Island to play a bit on the beach. I was able to pick a spot on the chart that showed a deep pocket of water by the beach that allowed us to back the boat into the beach, yet leave the keel in deep enough water to keep from grounding her. When we left, I just pushed the boat forward into the deeper section, started the motor and we were off...

The girls took this opportunity to investigate the shallows.

When we got back to the boat, the girls decided to drape themselves across the bow again.

Due to the success of our beach landing at Picnic Island, I decided to have a go at stopping by the spoil island southwest of there. Unfortunately, the area around the spoil island was full of rocks at varying depths, and when we motored down the length of the beach, we came across several 4-5 foot sharks. Yep, no need to get on that deserted patch of sand. That palm tree can have it!

Since we brought our fishing gear, we motored closer to a channel marker and tried our luck for about 1/2 an hour. I can honestly say that the fish in the area are quite safe from us.

As we were stowing the fishing gear, a wind front started to kick up, so we hoisted the sails and ran on a stiff breeze with occasional gusts that made for some fun moments. The gusts weren't overpowering the sails, the wind just seemed to push hard on the boat causing her to list about ten degrees, then the wind would settle back. This is when we started practicing our tacking procedures.

Another thing I did was install some 'tell-tale' ribbons on the sails so I can see how the wind is flowing across the sails. In this picture, you can see the red ribbon on the lee side is pointing straight back, indicating that the sail is making the most from the available power from the wind.

Meanwhile, Katrina decided to work on her needlepoint as we were heading back to the ramp.

The return and haul-out was uneventful (thankfully) and we hope to get her back on the water real soon. This is turning out to be more fun that the law should allow.

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

Hope everybody had a nice holiday with your friends and family. The only pictures I have are of the deep fried turkey I made when it 'exploded' as I tried to take it out of the lifting pan of the deep fryer.

I've never had a turkey come apart before like this. The top section literally fell back into the deep fryer holder.

Here is the bottom half of the turkey, in the tray where it's supposed to be.

And this is what it should have looked like if it all came out right, instead of my having to reconstruct the scene of the accident. When we served the turkey, it simply fell off the bone and was very juicy. At least I was able to get it looking right again...

Bridge Fishing

I had taken the day off to go fishing with my Uncle Frank and my cousins Karen and Frank William, but the weather was a bit too much for the charter captain, so he called off the excursion.

I decided to take Katrina and Jaime out to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge to try our luck. When we first arrived at the bridge, we came across this pelican.

Here is Jaime working the fishing pole.

Look at that skill...

We had stopped by Taco Bell for some burritos to go. Katrina was making short work of them while she was waiting for the fish to bite.

And of course, I had to try my hand at it. We had a bunch of fun catching 10 French Grunts that were about 6 -10 inches long and 1 Spider Crab.

A Little Tree Trimming Fun

The oak trees in our yard were getting to be a bit too big, so I had to trim them back. Katrina and Jaime helped us load the branches in the truck and then jumped on them the compact them. I strung a rope up so they could hold onto it while they jumped in the back of the truck.

Apparently, it turned out to be something of a toy too...

Looks like Katrina was in for a surprise when Jaime picked up a tree trimmer to cut the rope.

Museum Visit

Katrina told us about something called, 'Anime Night' at the Tampa Musuem of Art. She heard about it from her Japanese instructor at school, so we decided to see what they have to offer.

The wait in line to get into the museum was amazing. Since there wasn't much else to do, we broke out the camera and took a few pics. As a neat little touch, they lit votive candles and set them afloat in the fountain out front.

The entrance to the museum is just about waist level of the kid who decided to jump into this shot.

As we got closer to the entrance, and the end of the fountain, some of the votive candles piled up in the corner.

Just a pic of one of the many 'tall buildings' in downtown Tampa.

What was neat about this picture was the blue building. It actually shifts from red, to purple, to blue, then reverses the fade back to red.

Ahhhh, finally inside the museum. Unfortunately, the Japanese theme was actually an opportunity for the public to dress up in what they thought were Japanese costumes, but the authenticity, was severely lacking. The 'Anime Night' was actually quite diappointing. The people that decided to come in their interpretation of Japanese attire and mannerisms reminded us more of the people that dress up for the Rocky Horror Picture Show... Sad...

The only thing that caught our interest was the tea ceremony, and according to Katrina, they didn't perform it correctly. Instead of looking for more disappointment, we decided to cruise the art galleries. I especially liked the glassworks.. This one here is a cube that is made of multiple layers bonded together.

Here is another nice example of multi-layered glasswork. I'm pretty much hung up on sophisticated glass artwork, my favorite being the Mega Planets from Josh Simpson.

This primatic construct has dark blue and mustard yellow inserts imbedded into the clear sections.

I thought that the idea of using asian take-out containers with votive candles inside as pathway lamps was kind of neat...