On 24 December 1664, after a successful career in the service of the VOC, he left Batavia for the Netherlands on the Phoenix, serving as vice-commander on one of the ships in Pieter de Bitter's return fleet.
Borghorst left Texel, Netherlands, for the Cape on 27 December 1667, aboard the transport ship Hof van Breda, commissioned by the full Lords Seventeen of the VOC in Amsterdam.
The ship carried 268 on a difficult journey: poor weather forced two stays in English harbors (only 6 months after the end of the war) as well as in Cape Verde, at the time a Portuguese colony.
On the 18th, Van Quaelberg summoned the entire Political Council of the Colony to a meeting there to discuss the Lords Seventeen's letter replacing him.
Given his illness, most of his duties were handled by bureaucrats such as the fiscal Cornelis de Cretzer, who would later fulfill the same function for equally frail Commander Pieter Hackius and die tragically in slavery in Algeria.
He finished the canal from Zacharias Wagenaer's reservoir to the harbor, part of which was rediscovered during the building of the Golden Acre shopping center.