Sjef:
Your hospitality was absolutely the best we experienced on this trip. I can
never thank you enough for your assistance and generosity. Bruce and I
really appreciated it after all that we had been through. Hope you and your
wife will someday make it to the US for a visit.

After we left your place in Texel, we arrived in Wick Scottland to a low
ceiling and had to shoot an approach to the airport landed with no
difficulty. We rented and put on those awful immersion suits (half way
anyway, fueled up the plane and as we were taxing out, the weather closed
in. We could have gotten out of Wick but we were heavily loaded with fuel,
it was a bit late and weather was bad so we aborted and spent the night in
Wick. The weather was bad in the morning but we finally got off about

and on to Iceland. We arrived Reyjekavic (sp)Iceland to a howling gusting

knot wind almost straight down the runway. We fueled up and were pressing

to Goose Bay. At 22000 feet and a 3.5 cabin differential, about 250 knots
true and close to 300 knots ground speed, the pilots/door window cracked.

I was reaching for the dump valve, the window blew out! We executed an
emergency decent and 180 degree turn back to Iceland. I plugged in the
oxygen masks, squawked 7700, dialed in 12345 on the radio, contacted an
airliner to relay our situation to Iceland Radio and we flew on back to
Iceland at a lower level and much slower speed. The plane flew just fine.
Man was it cold! Bruce´s jacket with his wallet and passport and over 2
grand cash was sucked out of the plane.

Our speed leaving Iceland  over the Atlantic was slow, 165 IAS as we had
duct tape replacing the window and we had a elevator trim problem. So we
flew low and slow. When the window blew out at 22,000 feet, we were
indicating 200 IAS and a ground speed of 287 knots (well over 300 miles per
hour). We also had a trim problem as the elevator trim servo exploded into
pieces during the window incident. I still have not figured out how that
happened. We flew the plane from Iceland to Canada 6.7 non-stop hours with
the elevator trim tab taped level with the elevator. We had to hold serious
forward stick pressure at 165 IAS to keep the plane level. Out over the
Atlantic, we encountered moderate icing conditions. That was not fun. Icing
slowed the plane down at least 10 knots and we headed for lower, sometimes
higher elevations to shake off the ice. After we landed in Canada for fuel,
I estimated where the trim tab should be and duct taped it in place 1/4

up. That made the plane much easier to fly but harder to land.
We blasted over Northern Canada and spent the night in Churchill after a
foggy night landing. Up at O-Dark Thirty and off to Regina Canada, fuel and
press on to Salt Lake City, Utah USA. Today, Tuesday July 31, 2001, Bruce
and I flew the plane to Fresno. Ahhh, it is good to be back home.