HAPPY HOLIDAYS 2007!
23nd Annual Webb Hankey Holiday Newsletter

From Jack: Hi All! Hope your year was a fun and safe one! So far no new accidents on the boat but I've been super careful. My eye is back to normal so all is well on that front. We're back at the boat early this year so we can head west and leave behind wonderful Trinidad and the Eastern Is-lands.
--In Feb 2007, we flew back to the boat to sail north in March to a place we really love: Bequia! We did not crew the race this year but tried the excellent beach restaurants and renewed friendships. Then we went on to Martinique with a quick stop in St Lucia for a house call by an ophthalmologist surgeon! Our good friends Bob and Bev Warner on Foreclosure had a surgeon guest on board and he checked my eye and got a nice tax write-off for the trip! Isn't capitalism great!! I was happy!
--Martinique is one of two French islands here - Very French, with super food everywhere, friendly people, great anchorages, lots of French lan-guage (Fred's high school French worked well). We stayed three weeks and toured the island, hit every museum and tried to eat at every restaurant. Fred loved not cooking!
--We then headed back south to St Lucia and my favorite panoramic place in the Carib: The Pitons - two great mountains coming out of the sea and you moor right between them! Then, we sailed south to St Vincent in the Grenadines. Very poor but lots of history - we had a super tour of the island and rum factory! Lots of Cuban, Venezuelan and Chi-nese (Nationalist) influence on the island!
--Fred will cover the end of our sailing season but we agree it was over with tooooooo fast and we flew off for the land portion of our year
--We went back to our little Alaskan trailer by the lake at Kathy's, my sister-in-law, homestead in Wasilla and once again fell in love with the beauty and tranquility of Alaska. It was great to relax but then we began remodeling the homestead house. Short synopsis of projects: new attic with blown insulation and new wiring; new dishwasher; new microwave with outside exhaust fan; new front/back doors; finished the front entry; new front deck; and the standard yard work. Oh, and before Fred squeals on me, I did have one little accident, more messy than harmful! Fixing the attic, I had amisstep and fell though the ceiling,
sounds terrible but I caught myself on the rafters - but 14 inches of blown insulation falling into the living room was quite a mess!
--We worked on genealogy, our addiction, and finally found almost all living relatives of my Grandmother Bertha (nee Burrell) Webb. One cousin offered to have a Burrell Reunion in Wyoming. We rented a car in Salt Lake and visited the Mormon Family History Center, where I able to find
church records from Poland where my great grandfather Lucas was born. The Mormons are amazing with their re-sources!

--Next, we drove to Buffalo, Wyoming, where Joan and Wayne set up a super reunion for about 50 Burrell relatives from all over the United States. The Webbs were represented by Jane and Judy (two of my un-cle's daughters) from California and by yours truly. My grandmother had a brother with many descendants, mostly from the Chicago area and Iowa. She also had a sister, but alas, her descendants were not able to attend but we sure talked about them! And here I always thought my family was small!
--Then we drove on to Chicago (through Sturgis with 100,000 of our favorite motorcycle riders, yes, it was Bike Week in Sturgis, wow, what a gaggle!!). In Chicago, we stayed with baby Leo, ok, also with his parents Lennie & Katy, Fred's special cousin from Maryland. We had a super time there touring, ogling little Leo, going to an Italian street fair, ogling little Leo, and buying an IPOD (long story), and ogling little Leo! Then it was time to fly home to Alaska.
--We drove up to Fairbanks for a wonderful time with my cousin, Sherry, and husband Brian. We go back each year to see old friends and pro-mote our book: True North In Alaska. Good news! This year the University of Alaska and Binkley Boat Tours both agreed to carry our book. We then decided to fly to Rampart, where my parents taught in 1937 on the shores of the Yukon River. Through unbelievable luck, we found Henry Wiehl, who was a student of my parents in Rampart . Amazingly, we simply called him in Rampart on the cell phone and set up a reunion. Another Rampartite, Rodney Evans has a small air charter company and flew us to a wonderfully warm reception at the village. We felt great when we walked up to Henry's home and he met us at the door holding a well-worn copy of our book that they loved! We sat with Henry and his brother, Dan, and Rodney's father, Pete, and poured through the book adding names to faces. We toured the village and found that Father Time and the wilderness had taken back the old gold rush-era buildings where over 30,000 people had once lived. Much too soon we had to say goodbye to new friends, but we will return.
--In late Aug., with summer fading and Fred worrying about a little snow, the Alaska State Fair was on the horizon. Crews from three Trini-dad boats rented an RV and met us for a great time at the State Fair . We took them back to the homestead after sampling local brews in Wasilla. Sadly, they had to continue without us since we had medical appointments back in Maryland where we happily received a clean bill of health.
-- Fred will talk about our other travels but, way too soon, we headed off to Trinidad to get the boat ready for our trip west. Yes, we are going West leaving Trinidad and heading to the out-islands of Venezuela, Bonaire and a May haul-out in Curacao . We promise to be VERY careful and make it a quick trip though Venezuela. We will be doing lots of diving in Bonaire .
--As with last year, you can follow our trip by logging onto www.Winlink.org and then click on Position Reporter and type in: KG4BYM (my Ham radio call sign).--Hope you have a super 2007. Happy Holiday season!

From Fred: Happy Holidays!
Being homeless but boat owners, we were doubly blessed when I needed shoulder surgery in Nov '06. My cousin, Sandy Hankey Green, a nurse and her husband, John, graciously gave us their guest room thru the holidays and recuperation in Jan. Spending Christmas morning with family was great fun, more so when their little granddaughter, Halie Ruth Green (then 20 months old) kept us all laughing with her spon-taneous songs and chicken dances.

Jack had flown to Trinidad to finish the engine repair and he fell through an open hatch, hitting his eye socket, needing emergency sur-gery in the States. Thank heaven for John's Hopkins Hospital's Wilmer Eye Clinic. Three weeks later, he was cleared to fly back to Trinidad where I called into the radio network to thank our dear Trini friend, Jesse James, and our sailing buddies who took care of Jack. For weeks, everyone we met, friends, boat repairmen and strangers alike asked, "How is Jack's eye doing?

At the end of sailing season, we headed south to Trinidad. Sailing overnight on a clear night with a full moon made the sailing a dream of a trip. But it was followed by the usual headaches of storing a boat on land for the hurricane season, which is never fun. But staying at Tammy's lovely B&B gave us a cool reprieve from the 98°heat inside the boat.

We flew to the US to hear the big news: Lennie and Katy (nee Green) Cannizzaro's baby, Leo, was born in Chicago on his Dad's birthday! After a mad dash through Md. to see my sisters, cousins, honorary grandkids and to celebrate nephew, Zak Roberts' high school graduation, we were Alaska bound for the summer - or most of it! Setting up a travel trailer takes three hours versus a week for a sailboat! Some projects are unique to the far north, like starting up a mosquito magnet and hanging thick curtains to darken windows from the midnight sun!

Our grandson, Clayton (age 5) and his dad, Rob, took us fishing in their boat on Prince William Sound for a three-day weekend out of Whittier. We saw a pod of Orca whales romping around Rob's boat. Jack caught a silver salmon, which Rob cleaned and Clayton snagged and released some really ugly fish. I caught some great photos of bears, bald eagles, otters and whales.

Teaching swimming at Wasilla's indoor pool was still fun but was cut short because of our summer travel schedule. Jack and his brother, Dick, got surprised at the annual Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum at our book-signing booth. An older stranger asked them if they still liked beer? "Yes, Why?" Jack asked. The stranger, Al Fleaner, had been a 16-year-old teenager working for their Dad, (Dick Webb Sr. )at Wien Air-lines in Nome in the late 1940s. The young Webb boys, Dicky (age 7) and Jacky (age 3) went exploring on a regular basis; Al was sent to find them. One time, they were in the airplane mechanic's room downing the dregs from beer bottles! "[The Webb boys} were both pretty wild!" Al recalled with a smile.

Speaking of reunions, this year was full of family gatherings. Jack's cousins met in Wyoming, and thanks to our Australian cousin, Vin Lee, we met Lee cousins in Chester, England, the first connection in about 130 years! Although Vin's work kept him away, Jack and I had a magi-cal weekend with "Aunty Cath" and her family. We poured over antique photos, attended her church and shared a lovely pub dinner with her daughter, Susan (who is my half-3rd cousin!) and husband, Harry. The next day, Jack and I found more Lee descendants, the Graham family, Eileen, and her sons, John and Paul, who were glad to share their family tree research with us and with Vin Lee.

Researching my antique English and Irish family portraits, Jack and I met with museum curators in Manchester and Chester. They helped us learn to date our photos by two methods: 1st, by the dates the pho-tographic studios were in business and 2nd by the fashions worn in different decades. Sadly, our time for research ran out, so we kept good notes and closed the files until we find time to continue our search.

From Chester, we drove south through Wales to the historic port town of Fishguard where we visited the harbormaster, who told us he had once owned a boat called "Hummingbird" in Trinidad! We took the ferry to Ireland. Waiting for us at the dock was John Bayley, our honorary cousin from Wexford, who introduced us to fellow historians, great researchers and fabulous pubs. Then Jack and I headed west along the southern coast to play tourists around the Ring of Kerry and Dingle, before saying a tearful farewell to lovely Ireland.

We love hearing from you all, especially via E-mail, so please send a note (or your Christmas newsletter) us. We pray for our deployed troops and their counterparts and hope your New Year is filled with peace, good health, and love.
God Bless,
Jack Webb and Susan "Fred" Hankey Webb

PS: HOT NEWS! OUR TRAVEL PHOTOS ARE ON THE INTER-NET! We invite you to see our 2007 photos! We loaded our best (and wackiest) 2007 travel and sailing photos on line so you can see them without downloading them! Our photos are on a private website operated by Flickr.com (run by Ya-hoo). Access to our photos website is by-invitation only to our family and friends. If you would like to see these photos please send us an email with the Subject: PHOTOS and we will send you an invitation with an internet URL address to get you on the site.