HAPPY
HOLIDAYS 2009! 25th
Annual Webb Hankey Christmas Newsletter From
Jack: Hi all! We hope you had a super 2009 and your holiday season is a
wonderful one. We are back on Bonaire now (Latitude: 12 degrees, 9.6 minutes North,
Longitude: 68 degrees 17 minutes West). Finally, we are well and heading in the
right direction! We
flew back to Curacao right after New Years '09 and we were met at the airport
by our friend, Dianne, whose husband, Don Tetreault, had died suddenly while they
were in TX in Sept '08. Her goal was for us to help her sail "Cloud 9"
to Bonaire (with a memorial service for Don at sea), she would live aboard until
her crew arrived in May to sail it to the USA for sale. My favorite definition
of sailing is "doing boat repairs in exotic places." Helping Dianne
meant I was repairing two boats not one! The fates smiled, we helped her take
her boat to Bonaire, and her crew delivered it to the USA where it sold. Now Dianne
is starting a new life stateside. We wish her the best! We
launched Denali Rose in early January and I installed a solar panel above our
bimini and got the wind generator up and running. Between the solar panel and
the wind generator, we gain about 280 amp hours each day if the wind is blowing
15 knots and it is sunny. Our refrigerators use about 180 per day and our other
electrical items (computer, radios, etc.) use the rest. If we need more, or the
wind does not blow, we use the generator. In
late February, we sailed 45 miles west to Aruba because the Netherland Antilles
(Curacao and Bonaire) limit foreign boats (like us) to stay here only 12 months.
Our time would expire in early March. Our choices of foreign ports were either
Venezuela (NO THANKS!) or Aruba. In Aruba, we stayed at beautiful Renaissance
Marina with free access to their private island, swimming pool and gardens. It
is within easy walking distance of the capital with shopping, dining spots, movies
and museums. It is the friendliest island in the Caribbean! Trade
winds blew constantly from the east all of March. We waited all month for the
winds to calm down enough for us to sail back east to Curacao and farther east
to Bonaire to meet our friend, Felicia, who planned to fly there in April. The
winds finally calmed April 4th and we headed back to Curacao, dropped the anchor
at beautiful Santa Cruz anchorage, got back up at dawn, and sailed on to Bonaire.
We had a great time scuba diving on Bonaire and sailed back to Curacao to start
the arduous task of storing the boat for hurricane season. This time, when storing
the boat, we tried a new idea to keep some ventilation by running a tiny solar-run
vent fan and we installed a new thru-hull in the keel and left it open for the
summer to allow the rainwater out of the bilge. Wow, these two things helped!
Our Alaska trip
was cut to one month (Fred explains why in her notes). Once we arrived in Wasilla
at Dick and Kathy's house, we in-stalled modern wood flooring in their bedrooms
and home office. Fred and Kathy rearranged the guest bedroom. I even had time
off to go salmon fishing with my son, Rob, and grandson, Clayton, (age 7) in Prince
William Sound. The black bears were fantastic as well as the glaciers. Only bumped
one iceberg but it made a nice cocktail! We hope for a longer visit next year.
We flew back to Chicago and picked up our F-350 Ford pickup truck where we had
left it in July. We then drove to the RV factory where they had been working on
our 5th Wheel RV warranty issues. However, our RV still was not ready! They worked
like mad and got it done for us the next day with great success. We were also
there during the Carriage brand RV owners' international rally. One woman told
us, "There's this stove thing in the kitchen, but it's still new. We eat
out when we travel." That's FRED'S kind of RVer! Ha! There
is nothing like a crowd of kids to teach you techno-humility! Fred got the bright
idea to buy a Wii game with sports games to keep us fit (right?). Honorary grandkids,
Sierra (10), Tracer (8) and Jaedah (3) plus our cousin, Halie Green (4), had a
great time beating us! Halie's parents, Corey and Jessica, even practiced Wii
bowling until midnight just to catch up with her! We brought our Wii down to the
boat but have not had time to set it up yet!
FUTURE PLANS: My brother,
Dick, and Kathy Webb are flying down from Alaska to visit us in Curacao in late
January. Our 2010 plans call for a sail to Aruba
in March and hauling out again in Curacao in April. Then fly to the USA, Maryland
and Alaska, and fly back to the boat in September. Then sail off to Aruba, spend
Christmas 2010 in Colombia, then off to the San Blas Islands in Panama and haul
out in Colon, Panama, in April 2011. We will head through the Panama Canal in
Nov/Dec 2011 and head for Nicaragua. We have a new website this year to follow
our sailing route: look on the internet: http://www.winlink.org/userpositions
and then type in my call sign: KG4BYM and hit Search to see where the boat
is on a map. If we have a recent position report posted; our call sign will be
on the right of the page and you can just click on this. If
you would like to see our boat on a live web cam site here in Bonaire, go to:
http://www.breathebonaire.com/index.php?CURRENT_CAM=bonairecam1&SET_CAM=bonairecam1
Our boat is on the far right. -- We just saw Black Peter (St. Nicolas's helper
in Dutch tradition) and the Holiday season is upon us;"Bon Pasku" Happy
holidays in Papiamento. Hope you have a super 2010. From
Fred: Happy Holidays! Good
luck and great health care both Stateside and overseas sums up 2009 for me! When
we sailed to Aruba, I had serious stomach pain, that was first thought to be Dengue
Fever but lab work showed I had diverticulitis. Dr. Anaya, a Johns Hopkins-trained
specialist who even visited me on the boat, was top notch! While in the Aruba
hospital women's ward, I met a fellow patient, Janine Croes, who became our best
friend on Aruba! Janine is the front desk manager of a lovely vintage hotel, Amsterdam
Manor. Later, when we both recovered, she drove us on a fantastic tour around
the island. Our
great friend from West Virginia, Felicia Hovermale, flew down to meet us in Bonaire
for a much-deserved vacation. The perfect boat guest, she used a foldable duffle
bag, brought swimsuits and casual clothes. She won "VIP status" for
bringing boat parts and our stateside mail (Christmas cards in April!). We kept
her supplied with mango juice and crowned her "Princess of Mango Island."
Each morning Jack and I would awake to find her serenely perched in the cockpit
surveying her watery domain where turtles surfaced to greet her. Jack taught her
to snorkel behind our boat in the clear, teal blue water. Since Bonaire is only
12 degrees north of the equator, at night we pointed out both the Big Dipper and
the Southern Cross constellations. We all had a great time and hope she comes
back soon! In
late June while prepping the boat for summer storage in Curacao, I had chest pains,
which I attributed to dehydration and/or acid reflux. The pains came and went,
even on the flight to the USA, so I drank more water. The morning after we arrived
in Newark, NJ, while we were on the bus to the airport, the pain increased so
Jack called 911. The Continental Airlines representative got the airport medics
there in minutes. They took me to Beth Israel Hospital, which has an entire cardiac
floor. The cardiologist found a 99% block in one heart artery; he installed a
stent and released me the next day! My Mom must have worked overtime in heaven
to get me to an American hospital that specialized in cardiac cases in time!
Off we drove to my
hometown, Hagerstown, Md., where my cousin, Sandy Hankey Green, RN, and her husband,
John, opened their home once more to us. Sandy recommended an excellent cardiac
doctor for follow up care. With
my doctor's OK to travel, we picked up our RV that is stored in West Virginia.
Since our Carriage Fifth Wheel RV had warranty problems, and the local guys did
not have the right equipment, we drove it back to the factory in Indiana for major
repairs. Jack told them we would return in a month. We drove the truck on to Chicago,
parked it and flew to Alaska. As
a joint anniversary and my 60th birthday present, Jack bought us Jimmy Buffett
concert tickets for the show Sep 3rd in Manassas, Virginia! It was our all time
favorite concert. The fans' costumes were as entertaining as the show! Still
enjoying family history, we turned our attention to 1700s-era research in Frederick
County, Maryland. We joined the Thurmont Historical Society and learned about
an open house event benefitting a local church renovation the next week. I was
delighted to find a cousin there, who remembered my Dad and my Uncle Sam from
childhood visits to their farm in the 1930s! We promised to visit her next summer.
In September, we joined
fellow cruisers at the Seven Seas Sailing Association's Annapolis event where
a woman gave a lecture about rounding Cape Horn in South America. Those were exciting
photos of boats near icebergs but that kind of sailing is too cold for me!
I am now on Facebook.com
as "Susie Hankey Webb" and I am uploading our travel photos there. (I
used Susie instead of Fred to avoid grief from my siblings.) We
try our best to plan our days but the boat decides what projects we tackle! We
do take time for cardio walks and enjoy meeting friendly local people along the
way. We love hearing
from you all, especially via E-mail, so please send a note (or your Christmas
newsletter) to us at wanderingwebbs2@cs.com.
God
Bless you all, our deployed troops, and their families. Jack Webb and Susan
"Fred" Hankey Webb Wanderingwebbs2@cs.com |