Aalborg

4 August 2015

After a few days Tall Ships Festival in Aalborg it is almost time to go again. It were a few nice days in this friendly city. We have had three receptions on board which kept us busy and it was really nice to admire the fireworks last night. But the highlight came from earlier times.
Yesterday, an old man walked up to the ship. He started explaining all about the ship to someone else (who later turned out to be his son). I went over to meet them and it turned out to be Poul Erik Nielson and son.
That did not ring a bell immediately, but he proudly took his seaman’s book out and showed me that he sailed in 1952 as a deckhand on the ‘Fuglen’, as the ‘Oosterschelde’ was called when she was Danish owned. And then he showed me the Oosterschelde book written by Frits Loomeijer. He asked me to read the piece about how the ship was hit by the ‘Stentor’ while it was anchored on the New Waterway. His only comment on that story: he was no longer a sailor at that time!
He was very excited to hear that we just sailed around the world again so I gave him the book about the circumnavigation, which he loved.  It’s nice to see that the history of the ship is still alive!!