Visiting

…What happens if you put two men with the same background together?
Right, they can talk about it for hours.
They did that too.

The ‘Utrecht’ and the ‘Rio Parana’.

If you want to write a report about the time you sailed at sea, it is useful if you get some help with that.
You can write about a time that happened about forty-five years ago by means of photos, reports and a memory.

The latter will sometimes show holes.
You yourself want to prove the written stories to reality.
There are many sites on the computer that can provide information.
So corresponding pictures and facts are searched that fit the story.

Even though you are always looking for that one image.
The magazine ‘Blauwe Wimpel’ once showed a drawing by Reint de Jonge with Goof de Gelder on it, standing between the engines of the ‘Utrecht’.
I was also on board of that ship in 1967.
By the way, a picture of the artist is also hard to find.

Photos you once took in that time, are also interesting for someone else.
Then you go with your suitcase to visit someone who knows a lot more about Bureau Wijsmuller.
The company we had both sailed for.
The man who knows so much is Piet Voorburg and he maintains the noteworthy site www.bureau-wijsmuller.nl

In my suitcase are the witnesses of that time; photo albums, scrapbooks and testimonials.
These testimonials only reflect the first years of my sailing.
In them I had to state exactly what you had done on that particular day for work in the engine room or on the ship.
All this to get your VD diploma.

My ‘seagoing testimonial’.

Immediately upon entering, at Piet Voorburg’s home, we carry out the sea-hole.
One story quoted the next.
One even more beautiful than the other and told to the truth because we could now check it.
About legendary names who once sailed at Wijsmuller.
Interesting facts were exchanged.
Experiences that the other had not experienced.
Piet was busy with a number of stories, to which I could not contribute anything.
It was about ships I had never sailed on.
He sketched the cause of the loss of the sea towage.
Piet gave a glimpse into his kitchen with Wijsmuller ingredients.

I left behind my photo albums and scrapbooks.
Piet wanted to document everything and add to his collection.
I have already taken back my testimonials.
There was too much work in it.

A flying crow sometimes catches something.
Piet had a drawing by Reint de Jonge left over.
Once this one was on a Wijsmuller calendar.
The ‘Sedneth’ and the ‘Utrecht’ in a struggle for progress.
It is the impression of the artist but it represents the essence with what enormous objects were dragged.
The ‘smiling’ men stood on the aft deck of the ‘Jacob van Heemskerck’.
The weather was really bad.

The ‘Sedneth’.

It was good to be at sea again after forty-five years, with a good glass in hand.
Before we knew it, it was dark outside and time flowed by too fast.
We did not see the sea itself, we were at a safe distance from it.
But anyway!

The chairs were already moving on the sea.