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| Using a forklift and chain-hoist our engine is put back aboard |
While Juniper has been sitting Joan and I have not. We’ve
done a couple of bike rides, done a lot of shopping and continued washing,
rubbing, polishing and finally buffing a little bit each day. Regarding the
bike rides, I am so lucky that Joan is still willing to follow my crazy rides.
Yesterday we rode till the trail gave out, then the ruts gave out, turned around
and tried the other side of the river. Again rode till the road, then path then
ruts gave out. Saw what might be a road across a field so we pushed our bikes
to a new dirt road. Followed that to a paved road then it seems I got a couple
of village names mixed up so we also go a beautiful long ride on French country
roads through small villages.
The following is a letter we wrote to friends and family about how our trip had been going.
Just want to let everyone know we are alive and well.
Upon my arrival in St. Jean de Losne I was met by the owner
of the yard we spent the winter at – his first words were “I have some bad news
for you.” Apparently one of the two bolts that holds the top of the rudder in
place had sheared off – the problem was that the rudder is directly under the
engine. Time to call in a crane to lift the engine out of the boat, and that’s
after we found that 3 of the 8 bolts holding the engine in place had also
sheared off. But wait, there’s more – separating the engine from the hydraulic
unit showed that the plate (kind of like a clutch) that connected the two units
had fallen into many, many pieces plus the shaft that finalized the connection
had its teeth nearly stripped clean.
So what was going to be a few days cleaning up the boat
before Joan arrived turned into two weeks of cleaning things up waiting for
parts and getting the engine back aboard and working. We did get the bottom
paint cleaned up and used rubbing compound on the hull while waiting to get
back in the water. Then just to add insult to injury the French trains
announced they would be striking 2 days out of every 5 for the months of April
– June. This meant that Tom had to leave 3 days early and the day Joan was
arriving was nearly sold out. Soooo I bought Joan a train ticket, which Tom
took with him to Basel and met Joan in person to deliver it. Gerard, our
B&B host arranged a taxi to pick me up Easter Sunday to meet Joan’s train
and take us back to Gerard’s. Of course Gerard had made other plans since we
were supposed to be back aboard the boat by this time. Fortunately for us we’ve
spent enough time with him he left me the keys to his house and showed me how
to fix the breakfast part of B&B.
We finally took off Tuesday and have made it as far as
Dijon. Great weather and lots to see. We’re staying very near the old town
center and enjoy exploring the many churches, buildings and museums that date
back as far as 1000 years ago. I wish I could say all is going good – as we
left the last three locks on our trip to Dijon we lost power to the propeller
so are awaiting a visit from our mechanic tomorrow morning – since it’s such a
catastrophic failure, it should be easy to diagnose and fix, right?
We just got our hotspot loaded with a few gigs of upload so
should have some blog posts up in the next couple of days.
Oh, one more thing – Joan left her new computer behind at
security in Heathrow – it just arrived back in Seattle this afternoon.
Love from both of us – we are having fun and trying new
things, plus drinking lots of wine.
Our blog is:
canalboatjuniper.blogspot.fr
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