Life on the hard in the yard

Saturday 2 April

Forever is situated in a corner of the t-junction created by the main tarmac road that runs the length of the marina and the short untarred arm that runs to the canal and lift out area.  The lift out crane is usually left parked opposite our boat at night. It is a noisy, busy spot and we see most people come by. 

Views from Forever

Running along the main road is a long building, height of about 3 stories.  There’s a basement which is a car park, and there are a few marine businesses in the building, but it appears mostly empty.  Right at the t-bar is the rubbish dump.  There are numerous recycling skips for used oil, batteries, and paint and oil containers as well as a very large skip for general waste.  From our vantage point we have a bird’s eye view of this area.  Yachties are notorious scavengers.  Every day, dozens come by and unashamedly climb into the skip and hunt around.  They leave wielding unlikely treasures like pieces of timber, large bits of foam rubber, old scraps of carpet or broken equipment.  Some people (though not all) leave their better quality rubbish, like unwanted or broken equipment, at the side of the skip for easy access.  These items usually go on their first day.  When we left three years ago we put loads of stuff in big boxes at the side of the skip and watched with amusement as it all disappeared within a couple of days.

Today I rediscovered the joys of hand washing.  My excellent rubber buckets have disappeared (I think we may have given them to someone three years ago) but there is a washing up area in the ablutions block which I can use.  I am trying to do it often to keep the amount manageable. Our Swedish friend Ulla (that’s how it’s spelt) came by and said she had been to Port Napoleon to do hers as they have machines there - €6 to wash and €4 to dry!  I will continue to do mine by hand. 

Ulla and Lennart invited us to tea at 2pm.  Odd time, but off we went bearing a packet of chocolate biscuits. They built their boat, Pinta, themselves, it is much larger than Forever though the saloon is less spacious.  It has that wonderful ‘unfinished’ and well lived in look, with homely touches like a small herb garden.  It is made of steel, which is why it didn’t mind so much being dropped the other day.  Forever would not have fared so well.  Ulla and Lennart are very nice. They like to do everything themselves (or should I say Lennart likes them to) and Ulla made all their sails, clever lady.  I can’t imagine that.  We had tea, coffee, doughnuts and biscuits and chatted, particularly about the canal trip which they did last year, coming down from Holland.  They confirmed it was fabulous and had lots of useful information for us plus some charts that we are thinking of buying. The subject of Helmut came up again and Ulla said that he’d told her he had lost his driving licence some months ago for going through a red light!  Of course, this could be another of his jokes.  One never knows. 

After tea we had a couple of glasses of wine and left them at 6pm, intending to talk into town to the Restaurant du Port who do a plate of fresh mussels with chips and a beer or glass of wine for €10 – the same price as three years ago.  However, we lost impetus and stayed home.  I opened a tin of mussels, tossed them in garlic butter and roasted some potatoes and sweet peppers in the oven.