25 April 2016

Strandhorst

Our flights to the boat all worked out well, in fact the TAP flight from Lisbon to Amsterdam left on time and arrived 1/2 hour early. Nephew Michael kindly met us at the airport and drove us the 80 km to the boat. It only took Clive a couple of minutes to reconnect the power and toilet, turn on the heating and then we grabbed a quick pizza at the Italian restaurant on the dock and crashed.

Skip happy to be back!

Woke at 10 am (!!!) - no cats to wake us up wanting to be fed.

After crossing his heart, Skip turned on "the Beast", which started at first go. Excellent! He tested out the rudder, gears, revs etc - all working. He then tried the bow thruster and, oops NOTHING. 

So, anyhow, after 3 hours of dismantling the forepeak cabin he eventually got to the motor and had it out and taken apart. The problem was a seized bearing at the front end (?) - I think that´s what he said. Being Sunday we had no option but to wait until today to get it repaired. This morning, Andre from the marina office took Clive into town to a chap with a small workshop who gave it a big bang with a hammer and now it works. OK, so I might have simplified that a bit, but it was something like along those lines. It is now reinstalled (there was a lot of bad language coming from the forepeak - I had to cover my ears!) and is working fine.

Yesterday late afternoon we put the bikes together and headed across the river on the ferry to the only supermarket open on a Sunday in Zeewolde. Stuffed the panniers full to bursting and had a very chilly ride back again

In case you ever wondered what would fit in 2 panniers & a small backpack.

The weather has been CHANGEABLE. Mostly sunny, but every half hour or so the heavens open. We had every kind of water that falls out of the sky yesterday - rain, hail, sleet and, yes, snow! Temperatures around 3-8 depending whether we were in a sunny or sleety patch. Got down to -3 at some point last night. 

Hail on the deck - brrr!.

The friendly ferryman made me a souvenir snowball as it chucked it down on the ferry across. He thought it was very funny. I felt like chucking it at him :)

Happily we are really cosy on the boat - warm and toasty. Clive turns the heating on when he gets up for his 6 o´clock pee, and by the time we get up a couple of hours later it is 16 in the boat. We turned on our new aftdeck tent heater yesterday evening and sat out with a drink and some oude amsterdam cheese. We had to turn it off when it got to 22 degrees and we were sweltering. So that works!

Our plans have changed somewhat, with the delay in departure and the weather. Tomorrow we will putter up to Elburg, about 18km up the meer. We will stay there for Koning´s dag on Wednesday as it is a pretty old town and should be very jolly. We´ll then look out the window and decide where next. 

PS  This German keyboard is taking some getting used to as the Y & Z are transposed, so pardon me if I forget sometimes.