Ali Baba 2016 In some ways the season started very early for us this year when I returned to the boat in late January to start with the re-installation of the port engine. During the winter this had been refurbished with new bearings and seals and should be ready for a few more years of good service. We decided to carry out the work as the oil pressure had been a little low after a long hard run, so back in November I helped the yard engineer Wilhelm to get the engine out and up into the main cabin; it was not possible to remove it from the boat completely without a huge amount of additional work. After a lot of huffing and puffing we got the engine lying on its side in the main cabin and were able to remove the sump and then all the main bearings. Surprisingly there was very little sign of wear, but we still decided it would be a good idea to replace the bearings. The picture above shows 670 Kgms. of engine emerging from below, while on the left the main cabin looks more like a very untidy workshop. (Good job the first mate was not around.) Christmas came and went and I earned a few more pounds driving a taxi for Manor Cars, and had a lot of fun meeting all sorts of new people. But at the end of January I returned to Emmerich to finish the work on the engine and drop it back into position, however after another session of huffing and puffing, when the gearbox refused to fit back onto the engine, we gave up. This was mainly due to the rubber buffers that connect the drive train had gone very hard, we also need some other spare parts, so it was decided to abandon the work to await for the spares to arrive, and I returned home to Clare.
By the end of March all the parts had been acquired and Wilhelm, the yard engineer, had replaced the gearbox. I finished off in the engine room and started to get the boat ready to go back in the water. There was still a lot of work to do including coating the bottom of the boat with fresh antifouling paint. The time passed very quickly and I didn t get the time to polish the hull as I usually do, but she didn t look too bad when she was relaunched in the second week of April. Rita arrived on the 18 th. April having flown with Ryanair to Dortmund as the time of the flight was much more convenient than the flight to Weeze. We worked away steadily at all the jobs that needed doing and after a considerable struggle managed to get something like a good oil pressure in the starboard engine. The first weekend in May was the start of the season party day, and we all assembled in the new club house for coffee, and then a flotilla of twenty six appropriately dressed boats set off down the Rheine to a neighbouring harbour for lunch. In the evening we again all assembled in one of the big winter storage sheds for a large party, complete with disco loads of food and the usual overabundance of drinks. Once again Marielle and her team gave us a wonderful evening. Early in May we returned to the UK so we could attend various appointments and make our postal votes in the coming referendum, all went well and we came back to Emmerich on 8 th. June, brining with us new cushions for the main cabin. They looked very good, but another 1,000 had been poured into a boat we are trying to sell. While we were back in the UK we had a chance to celebrate the skippers seventieth birthday, this we did with a very old friend who I have known for more than fifty years. As Terry had a much more suitable house, we3ll a bungalow really, we moved to Dersingham in Norfolk for the weekend, and as has become the custom on these occasions consumed far too much. Thanks to Terry and his wife Doreen, we had a wonderful weekend and a great party on the Saturday night.
The photos are before during and after the party and the wonderful cake that was made by Doreen s daughter in-law. The week end before we returned to the boat I also had the opportunity to help out some colleagues at the RNLI during the Shotley Marina open day. This is always a worthwhile day out, with a chance to meet lots of new people, and hopefully offer some advice to keep them safe on the water. On the 8 th June we returned to the boat and once again we set about the various tasks that we had said we would complete this year.
Every day we do a little cleaning and polishing or work on a specific task, this along with various little jobs around the harbour keep us amused but far from stressed, in fact life continues at a very gentle pace. One of the great pleasures of living on the water is the continuing changes in the weather and the wild life. We are very lucky to have such a wide variety of birds in the marina and watching them look after their young is pure enjoyment. This is not a photo of a duck with three heads but a grebe with two babies on its back. The ever changing sky can be another spectacular vision, especially in the evening as the sun starts to set. We have had the pleasure of witnessing some very impressive cloud formations, and these are just a couple of photos we have managed to acquire. The colours can be incredible, while at times the whole sky seems to be on fire.
On the 8 th. July I had a short break from harbour master duties in the marina, to come back to the UK for a hospital appointment, and the good news is, that everything is OK and no further treatment is needed at the moment. I returned to the boat to find that Mrs. Browne had filled up all the visitors berths and left me no room for anyone else who turned up, in fact over the weekend we have been very busy keeping everyone happy and sorting out their needs and wishes, some of which can be very strange. Do you have 50 cents for the shower. That was a 7 in the morning, and Can you sell me some cold beer, as my friend is coming and I haven t been able to get to the shops. We were thinking we should open a café. Early in August we were invited to spend a weekend with some friends in Dusseldorf. We had a wonderful time with Garbie and Jo, and spent most of the Saturday in the old town enjoying the local hospitality. A light snack was ordered for lunch but this turned out to be a huge meal. We then walked by the Rhine and took more refreshment on an old ship moored alongside the bank. Later in the evening we walked to the harbour area, which has been totally modernised, where we found a very good fish restaurant for our supper. Above are the hundreds of people walking around in the Düsseldorf old town, while on the left is the modern harbour area. On Sunday we were treated to a special outing to Wuppertal and a ride on the overhead railway, known locally as the Schwebebahn
We then travelled a few miles to tour an old castle and took a ride on a chair lift down a very steep hill. Rita was not at all impressed, but never the less arrived back at the top unscathed. We had just twenty four hours to gather our thoughts before we set off again, but this time to visit friends Hubert and Ilona in Ost Friesland. This is part of Germany that is very similar to Lincolnshire, being very flat, and situated in the north west of the country. We arrived on the Tuesday afternoon, and it wasn t long before we were all enjoying a very pleasant barbeque, in the accompaniment of their two very well behaved dogs Julia and Mary. On Wednesday, and after a huge breakfast we set off for a trip to Clemenswerth Castle. The castle was commissioned by one of the most prominent princes of the church of the Holy Roman Empire: the elector Clemens August of the Bavarian house of Wittelsbach (1700-1761) archbishop of Köln prince bishop of Münster, Paderborn, Hildersheim and Osnabrück, as well as grand master of the Teutonic Order. It was built as a hunting lodge where he invited guest to hunt in the 148 acres of the grounds. He always stayed in the central building while the guests were housed in the surrounding houses. When you stand in the centre of the ground floor of the castle, it is possible to look through a window at each of the guest houses. In the evenings grand feasts were held in the central castle. The whole of the grounds are now a museum, with each of the surrounding houses depicting one particular aspect of Clemens August s life.
The central castle with one of the guest houses in the background. Hubert examines the roof of the chapel, while on the right was just some of the weapons used at the time. After a light lunch we drove a little further to take a walk around an old mile that is powered by both water and wind. This was a day we both very much enjoyed, and it made us think that perhaps we should spend a little more time looking at what we have back in Suffolk.