Waiting for the Crane

 St. Jean de Losne

A first French Shrug

Lilou and I have arrived in France, are back on Armida, and in the water but have already had our first French Shrug that illustrates the Uknown Unknown aspect of boating.  

It was a fairly routine trip with a minor correction when I realize on the RER train into Paris that our connection to the TVG at the Gare de Lyon was going to be tight. Fortunately the the SNCF Connect App actually worked well and let me rebook on a slightly later train to Dijon.  Picked up a rental car and arrived in, a much cooler than recently, St Jean de Losne, and much cleaner after a downpour that morning.  I got the back half of the cover off and into the clean, if a bit musty boat. and we flopped in for the night. A couple of days cleaning and organizing and we were ready to go back in the water.  I spoke to David in the yard on Monday about going in on Tuesday and he said we will load up the trailer that night.  The implication was that we would go in first thing.  Never assume!   

Next morning I heard the crane start up and wandered over to check, where I found a boat transport truck waiting and a large cruiser in the water.  Oh well, not first thing.  The cruiser was fairly tall and I am guessing it was the common story of the boat comimg up the Rhone and Saone and planning to take the canals to the North.  At St Jean de Losne is where they find out that there is a height limit of 3.5m (on good days) and a road trip is called for. I asked David how long?  Shrug.  2-4 hours?  Maybe all day, I joked.  

An hour later the boat is lifted and there are people looking at the bottom.  "Oh, it has twin props, they will have to come off".  Not always easy to do, and two workers spent the rest of the morning, tapping, hammering, heating and clamping.  I thought my joke may be true.  Around 2, after lunch of course, the props finally relented and the boat was loaded and gone.  And we were in.  

No leaks, but no engine start either.  The yard had replaced some cooling pipes on the engine before I got there that involved a large mechanic poking around in the enclosed engine bay.  This can and did lead to some older wires beging disturbed, namely the Neutral interlock and the shut off solenoid.  I fixed the first the engine started straight up, and then wouldn't stop.  Fixed the second, cleand the hull and motored around to the marina pontoons.

The marina is quiet with most of the Kiwis gone but we are adjusting to this life quickly and looking forward to setting off next week.  Lilou now has a bad back and can't walk too far so we have another chariot.  It gets a lot of smiles and comments that always include "Bebe", so think they are surprised not to see a baby in there.

ised