Winter in Oslo this year is wet, windy and cold, so walking home late at night is not the most fun one can have with shoes on. Was in only old habit or a belief in devine forces hoping to make the eveing a bit warmer that made me check the mail box a midnight? How optimistic can one be?
As we all know the postman always rings twice, and while the mailman sleeps, DHL apparently delivers – late. Much to my surprise the hand grabbed onto a padded envelope carrying a DHL label.
Like a small child on Christmas evening I ripped open the envelope and out fell a nice black T-shirt with “New Zealand” written over the chest with big letters and a nice Christmas card. What is all this I wondered, thinking I knew that I did not know anybody in NZ. Was my knowing wrong?? It turns out I was partly right. So here comes a for me surprisingly nice story:
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| A great New Zealand T-shirt |
A while back before Iris was bought, I looked at another vessel in the Netherlands – Stormvogel. I liked the vessel immediately being designed by Dick Koopmans and bearing much resemblance to Iris – pilothouse and everything. Stormvogel is, however, 5ft longer.
Someone else bought the vessel, undertook at not to minor refit at the Hutting yard in Makkum, and then crossed the large pond during winter of 2012.
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| Beautiful vessel under sail |
I found this and more in the blog of new owner, Peter Wiedekamm and his family. They have embarked on a long journey. Being interested to learn and pick up a few tricks I follow this blog. A months ago the they arrived in NZ, and I posted a comment on the blog.
Surprise – Peter tracked me down and mailed the Christmas present.
But I presume he first had to buy the t-shirt in NZ, carry it home to Germany where he now is taking a break from sailing, before mailing it to Noway.Who does that? Thanks for the present and for providing another proof of the good in mankind.
The blog of this remarkable person is found here: The travels of Wiedekamm and Stormvogel