Beautiful one day…...

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Spring flowers in St Jean de Losne

This April Burgundy should definitely claim the Queensland slogan! We have enjoyed nothing but sunshine and blue skies. The nights are getting longer with the sun setting around 8.20pm over the Saône.

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One by one some of our boat friends from last year have arrived, pulling trolleys along the platoons laden with supplies of the solid and the fluid kind.

A flurry of activities has started up. Boats are being scrubbed, railings polished, oils exchanged and paints being touched up.

So it started to feel wrong sitting on the flybridge with feet up and reading “The hundred year old who climbed out of a window and disappeared” (thanks, Annie, great book!). We too found ourselves jumping into action and getting the Freshwater spruced up.

First on our list was the repair and repainting of the deck. By the end of last season it had become evident that the former owners had touched up and covered over cracks and rust spots just for the sale. Paint had started to flake and filler started to crack. So we got onto our knees and sanded, filled and painted until our hands were as rough as sandpaper themselves.

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Well, it was really all me - Austin is just pretending for the photo!

We got it all done and dry, so we are now able to exit and enter the boat without climbing through the fore cabin’s porthole as we did for 2 days while the paint cured.

On top of this we also managed to wash all the Sahara  Desert sand of our boat - and that is no bull! All the boats in our marina were sprinkled with reddish-brown dust, which the strong south wind had carried all the way to Burgundy.

Great news, by the way: our new driving shaft has arrived! It takes up the whole length of the capitainiere’s shop. how one of those could have been lost beats me!

In two days we are off to England and then Germany, and we are hoping that by the time we are returning shaft and prop are at their appropriate place at the bottom of the keel of the Freshwater.





© Austin Robinson 2019