Catching up

It's two weeks since I posted my last blog, which is unlike me. I always like to do it every week because it's still my favourite place on the Internet. I must say if I had to give up all my social media activities bar one, this would be the one I would choose to keep.

Have said that, the reason for my tardiness is simply life. It's been a busy two weeks with plenty of quite intense activity on the boat front. Last weekend, my daughters came over to see us and we took a spuddle round the harbour in my rowing boat. We'd intended to go in the Vereeniging, but daughter 2 said she'd prefer the rowing boat. Much less to do and  as the tide was coming in by the time we set off, it was probably wise anyway as we might not have cleared the bridges in the Vereeniging. We had a lovely afternoon and one of my sons-in-law joined us too.

There's nothing quite so nice as messing about on the river

And seeing barges both large and small

And of course the ship's dog had to come too

What made it even more special were the gifts my girls brought me. These gorgeous paintings of my beloved Sindy are now standing in pride of place next to my desk on the Vereeniging.

Then on Monday, Koos and I did the test run on the Vereeniging that we'd been hoping to do over the weekend. It's been an uphill struggle to sort out the issues with the fuel supply, but it seems that Koos has finally cracked it and everything's going swimmingly now. He’d spent much of the previous week working on it and we’d changed the oil and cooling water too. For the trial run, we went out for about an hour and gave it some 'welly'.

It's a shame the weather wasn't as good as it was at the weekend , but we loved being out and about and it was a super successful test flight...sorry...float.

My old girl does like to make a bit of smoke though...a regular puffing Billy she is while she's getting warmed up. A change of fuel might help, but it smokes much less when it’s up to temperature.

Then in other news, after I finished work on Thursday, we pelted down to Zeeland to sort out the collection of our new heartbeat for the Hennie H, our holiday boat that had heart failure last year. The Vereeniging is essentially my home and the Hennie H is our ‘caravan’. By the way, boats never give you any peace. Be warned! They take up more time than children and animals combined, and barge owners are rarely rich. Their boats are a regular money pit.

To cut a long story, we bought this workshop crane so we could lift and manoeuvre the new engine (the heart) on our own. It proved to be worth its (and our) weight in gold as there was no way we could have shifted the new (old) engine without it. Koos set it up yesterday and then today, we dragged ourselves out of bed at sparrow's whotsit, pelted off to the garage to pick up our hired trailer and then drove to Den Haag to collect the new 'organ'. 

Back in Zeeland, these photos below are of Koos lifting the engine (several hundred kilos of it) off the trailer and settling it onto the ground. There is no way on earth we could have managed without it. Mammoet eat your heart out! (In case you don't know, Mammoet is a huge crane building company in the Netherlands and their corporate colour is bright red). Isn’t it nice how the crane and the engine match? Serendipity, I think, so hopefully it also bodes well for the future of the project. We have a long road ahead before it’s installed, but this the first step!

So there we have it. The end of one very busy two weeks, and we are now both justifiably exhausted. Till next time allemaal!