YESTERDAY’S NEWS - SUNDAY 29TH JUNE - DIKSMUIDE

 

Yesterday, we did mention that we’d moved a few hundred metres. We may not have seemed excited about that but we were.

We were becoming quite attached to our mooring high above the concrete floor. It wasn’t all beer and skittles of course.  Having to climb down a ladder to empty the washing up bucket could wear a bit thing after a while, and walking what seemed like kilometres through a shipyard to answer those midnight calls of nature while the new loo sat in its corner giggling at us, was not a highlight. None the less, we couldn’t help but feel just a little superior, perched up on high as the world went on below us.

Yesterday morning as promised, all that changed.  Thijs arrived with a pocket full of bolts, installed them and as is is way, with no fuss at all, gently lifted and placed our little ship back into her natural environment.  

It is truly amazing how the character of an inanimate object can change with its surroundings.  In an instant our Joyeux was transformed from something akin to a container on stumps, to a living thing, quietly moving on the water like a pet returning home, sniffing around to make sure she was really back.

Mr Perkins, bless him, awoke from his slumber with the merest prod, behaving impeccably for the entire four hundred metre journey back to the Port.  Perhaps he’s saving his dark and recalcitrant side for Franky tomorrow, or maybe like us, he’s genuinely glad to be on the water again.

It’s nice, we have the feeling we are on our way, even if we are not.  We’re living in a boat filled to its eyeballs with wire offcuts, tools and electrical connectors.

With a little luck we’ll have finished fitting the new lights tomorrow and inevitably with the other of us barely able to conceal her fidgeting while work has gone on around her for the past few days, will unleash her super power and some semblance of tidiness will magically appear.

A LIGHTBULB MOMENT - SATURDAY 28TH JUNE - BUITENBEENTJE DIKSMUIDE TO PORTUS DIKSMUIDE

 

My father, were he still alive would have been amazed.  Come to think of it, I am amazed.

Who would have thought it possible after spending admittedly many frustrating hours over very many years, documenting as best we could, the electrical system, measuring all of the components, taking countless pages across the world, deciphering them into some sort of drawing, buying all sorts of brand new switches and fancy schmanzy LED warning lights, printing a new control and dash panels, assembling the bits then, carrying the lot back halfway across the world only to find everything fitted perfectly!

Except for one teensy little thing, even more miraculously, everything worked first time too. In the few hundred metres we steamed today, the alternator warning buzzer, buzzed ever so quietly but incessantly while dear old Mr Perkins was doing his thing, which leads me to a conversation one of us had with Chris last week in Paris.

While the other of us, and shall we call them for the purposes of this tome, her lady friends, were chatting idly about the colour and splendour of our night in Versaille, we of the other gender were deeply engaged in a conversation disecting Chris’ alternator. A conversation one hesitates to add, we’d started the evening before, but were interrupted when he was called away to boil the potatoes and we, to dine.

His new alternator wouldn’t charge unless he put his finger on the agitator wire, and to cut many hours of truly enjoyable in depth analysis short, this turned out to be because his new fancy schmanzy LED warning light did not have enough resistance to tell the agitator to agitate, but we never could work out what that had to do with his finger.  

If ever there was a lightbulb moment to be had, recalling that conversation was literally that. Surely the coincidence was too great.  

Not wishing to pleasure Mr Perkins every time we ask him to do our bidding, a few minutes of work was all it took to place the old bulb in a parallel circuit behind the fancy schmanzy one, creating just the right amount of resistance to instantly solve our problem, and leaving both of us a little bit stunned.  

There is a moral to this story of course:

If you are called away mid conversation, make a note of where you were up to so you can kick off again later - you never know who you will be helping!

RUDDERLESS - FRIDAY 27TH JUNE - BUITENBEENTJE DIKSMUIDE

 

Meanwhile, at the back of the boat, it’s after nine in the evening, and in his spare time today Thijs has managed to dismantle everything, drive to who knows where to purchase the relevant bits, make the necessary repair, and had it almost ready to go by sunset. He seems to be as chuffed as we are that the job wasn’t filled with hidden complications ready to bite at every turn.  In fact, he even suggested we wait until winter to replace the bearings, because the job was so easy he seems to want to do it again!

If all goes to plan, the sealant will have cured by the morning, and soon after the shops open he’ll be back with the four bolts needed to finish the job.

Who knows what then?  One suspects we’ll get to see if the old girl can still swim before lunchtime.

Then, well we mustn’t forget Mr Perkins still lurking in his hole with his leaky injectors of course. A superstitious person, or one who is not superstitious but has put up with his cranky habits for a decade and a half, might well have their fingers and their toes crossed until the outcome of Franky’s inspection on Monday.

Until then, let’s just be overjoyed at how swimmingly things have gone over the last few days.  The wiring is close to complete too, and without comprehensive testing everything seems to work, and there was no smoke to be seen so that’s encouraging.   It’s been a job 15 years in the making and only took three days in the end.   A sensible person would have torn it all out and started from scratch, but then a sensible person would probably have known something about boat wiring before commencing work, or hired someone who did.

It’s not perfect but it’s tidy enough, and in the unlikely event of a hiccough it should be easy to see if there’s a problem.

Come to think of it, if there’s a problem we probably won’t be able to see it through the tears!

ANOTHER HAPENCE OF TAR - THURSDAY 26TH JUNE - BUITENBEENTJE DIKSMUIDE

 We’re only a metre or two from land, but the problem is that it’s in exactly the wrong direction, and while some of you will no doubt be thinking “well at least they have a fancy new loo don’t they?”. which is true, in the absence of water under hull, the flushing medium is entirely absent, which is to say, we're still hanging on!  

In the normal course of events, if there is such a thing, we’d have been afloat today, gently bobbing up and down, flushing happily and hanging around untangling dashboard wires until Franky arrives on Monday to give Mr Perkins a bit of a tickle before we charge off into the wild blue yonder.

In the alternative normal course of events, we would have discovered earlier that the ancient grease nipple in the rudder shaft is no longer grease nipple shaped, and the wonders of dissimilar metals in contact with each other in a marine environment had created what some would consider the potential for unacceptable risk of water intrusion.  In the normal course of events grease nipples are simple things to replace, you just unscrew them and screw in a new one.

This grease nipple is different.  It is now just a lump of oxide, barely hanging in, the only thing between inside the boat and the river is one small clip and a greaser hose.  In the normal course of events, one might heat it a bit, ease it out, tap a new thread and screw in a new one. Problem solved.

Haplessly for us, possibly the reason for it being in this state is that getting access to it requires removal of the entire rudder assembly and maybe that removable bit of the keel which holds it in place as well, and on a boat this age, well let’s just say dismantling does come with the risk of finding an endless succession of things that need attention “while we’re at it”.  We could just ignore it of course and it will probably get us back one more time, but the phrase “for a hapence of tar the ship was lost’ echoes in the back of our minds.

So while one of us runs off cross legged in search of a bigger tar bucket, the other is two days into it has almost unfathomed the mysteries of the wiring cobweb, and hanging on.  

We are looking forward to using that loo.

TO THOSE WHO WAIT - WEDNESDAY 25TH JUNE - BUITENBEENTJE DIKSMUIDE

We’ve been waiting sixteen years for this loo.  This might partly explain our complexion and our propensity to fidget a lot, but thanks to the patience, skill and not to forget a propensity to work during every waking hour it has happened.

Of course the virtues mentioned above are not ours, but those of the human dynamo we think of as Super Thijs.  

Not only do we have a new and very respectable loo, of the kind that we would not be ashamed to show to guests, but it’s got a tank, where optionally we can carry our effluent around for a bit, and drop it off in a spot of its choosing.  

At the other end of the boat, despite putting in just as many hours everything is in substantially more disarray than it was before.  Some things do work as expected to be fair, but the wiring for others has just disappeared.  

Ahh well, tomorrow will be another day, and for now at least we can discharge stuff even if we can’t charge anything.

There’ s not much to miss about the old loo, but the sound of the fish splashing eagerly in that very small tube will live in our memories for ever.

For those with short memories, do check out our 2010 post linked below for a complete explanation.

https://fadingmemories.peterhyndman.com/2010/07/poo-chute.html

THE BEAT GOES ON /br> - TUESDAY 24TH JUNE - PARIS TO BUITENBEENTJE DIKSMUIDE

 

It really didn’t seem like a week, perhaps because it was only six days, or perhaps it was because time flies when we are having fun.  

Either way, when we woke today it was time to hit the road once again, back to the wirING things we’d been avoiding, back to the hole in our hull where the toilet once was.

On days like to today, there’s a rhythm to travel, despite the apps and trains that glide at three hundred kilometres per hour or perhaps distorted by them.  One can tell the time of day by the passengers that join as at each change, workers at the end of rush hour on the Metro, seniors travelling cheaply after nine, young mums looking for coffee when Brussels arrives around lunchtime, and school children, rowdy and excited, our accompaniment on the final leg.  While I’m playing the old catch the train doing 300 on the phone gps trick, a modern day Jack Kerouac is pretending to read, no doubt writing a poem about us in his head, in time with the clicks from the telephone screen shots I’m taking to prove we were there.

And then it’s over, we walk the kilometre and a bit back to the boat to find Thijs invisible , hidden inside the vanity unit, wrestling with what in a day or two will be poo pipe.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a day’s travel at its finest.

Done.

LOST IN TRANSLATION - MONDAY 23RD JUNE - PARIS

 

The artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot has taken over the Rotunda of the Bourse de Commerce with an installation which according to his description transforms the Rotunda into a space conducive to reverie, and who are we to argue?

Those white ceramic bowls float across the blue surface, generating melodious, enchanting sounds as a light current pushes them along.

The title clinamen, according to the brochure, comes from Epicurean physics and refers to the random trajectory of atoms, a concept that resonates with the work’s inevitably changing and unpredictable nature.  We spent a very cordial few hours enjoying this unpredictability and immersing ourselves in those melodious sounds, pondering as we did, the meaning of life or anything else that came to mind.

It’s quite possibly a metaphor for our very existence we thought, or more specifically one for a visit to a bakery before breakfast.  Charming, melodious and not at all predictable.

I am no linguist, but usually I arrive home with the bakery items I’d ordered all present and accounted for.  

This morning’s nasty breakfast surprise came when the brown paper bag containing the croissants was opened revealing not one single croissant, but four pains chocolate in lieu.

What trickery was this, we wondered?

Perhaps my pronunciation is so appalling that “croissant” sounds for all the world like a plea for “pain chocolate” to the delicate ears of a native.

Or perhaps, more likely Epicurean physics was at play.

Whatever the case, the pain chocolate was not a terribly long lasting disappointment.