Finding my brother's killer - Sailing Cambodia Part 2

Finding my brother's killer - Sailing Cambodia Part 2 I grew up in the coastal town of Whakatane on the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand. At the age of twelve my father threw me into a p-class yacht and I learnt to sail for the first time. At the same time my eldest brother Kerry purchased a yacht of his own and set off from Darwin into South East Asia with his friend Stuart Glass and Kerry's girlfriend. Back then there was no social media, communication was very difficult, certainly not phone calls and the staple was letters. Kerry wrote wrote the most amazing letters and my dad would read the letters round the kitchen table, together. We lived vicariously by Kerry's adventures and it kind of planted a seed in my mind, at that time, that one day I too would go saying the seven seas and have adventures similar to my brother and I have. I was 14 years old when those beautiful letters from Kerry stopped. Time past and we had no idea what had happened to Kerry and his crew. My father wrote letters all around the South East Asia's ports looking for information, contacting friends, other sailors, nothing, we had no idea. We heard the devastating news sixteen months later. Kerry had been captured by The Khmer Rouge, taken prisoner back to Tuol Sleng prison, where he and his charter, and Englishman called John Dewhirst were tortured for two months, forced to sign confessions to being CIA, and were then executed. Thank you to BNO productions for letting us use footage from Brother Number One in this vlog. Brother Number One trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39l1fBwYxIQ Links to film https://www.amazon.com/Brother-Number-One-Rob-Hamill/dp/B011T5D9PC or www.op.co.nz/film/brother-number-one/ Music David Mumford - Ball and Chain Musicbed.com Thank you for helping keep us afloat and supporting the creative process. You can be part of the crew for less than the price of a coffee. https://www.patreon.com/CruisingKiwis Some of our supporters prefer to make a direct contribution by Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=QXFNKDRGFDAP8 We also have crypto wallets if you'd like to contribute to our maintenance fund that way: BITCOIN bc1qds53n9tqepxvauqn9dygtczltyu6genkfp9a8a ETHEREUM 0xB4Cb9e1Aa9c000055DAde5E077809B904EE34CDD CARDANO addr1q9xw6hjjqlad7av2k6facn0277u3q4tylrpyev9x9zs54vjva409ypl6ma6c4d5nm3x74aaezp2kf7xzfjc2v29pf2eqrf7zaz Dash Xh5xLgH4oQ4pwM6V3d9r96A52R6ckereTz DOGE DQGxY6Cak3AuuihR8R7iQHNcBp25z9WnMa WEB SITE www.thecruisingkiwis.com SOCIAL MEDIA Follow us on: Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/THECRUISINGKIWIS Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/THECRUISINGKIWIS Much love to you all, Rob, Rachel, Finn, Declan, Ivan https://www.patreon.com/CruisingKiwis BACK STORY In 1997, after rowing at the Atlanta Olympics, Rob rowed a tiny 7m (22 foot) plywood boat 2,500 miles from Tenerife (Canary Islands) to Barbados (Caribbean). It took six weeks for Rob and rowing partner, Phil Stubbs, to complete winning the inaugural Atlantic Rowing Race. Skip forward to 2014 and, married with three children, Rob and his wife Rachel purchased Javelot, a 43 ft Fountaine Pajot catamaran. Armed only with Rob's 3 years of racing P class yachts from the age of 11 to 13, and Rachel's non existent sailing knowledge, We set off to learn the ropes of ocean sailing. We broke stuff, replaced stuff and got to know their boat before heading offshore with the kids, Finn (then 13), Declan (then 11) and Ivan (then 8), in tow. Through trial and error we have become confident wayfarers, kind of. The plan? To sail around the world. Part of the journey will be retracing Rob's eldest brother Kerry's travels at sea. Using Kerry's original letters from the 1970's we hope to retrace his movements from Australia through Indonesia and South East Asia to Cambodia where Kerry's life was cut short after straying into Cambodian waters in 1978. Kerry and two friends were attacked by a Khmer Rouge gun boat, captured, tortured and executed. www.brothernumberone.co.nz ***** Follow us in real time on Instagram and Facebook @thecruisingkiwis @finn_hamill @declan_hamill @ivanhamill # sailing #familyhistory #Cambodia #KhmerRouge #thecruisingkiwis