October 15th, 2010

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Friday Oct 15. The engine is in the boat

Friday, October 15th, 2010

From Right, driver, Marian, Christi and ?

But not hooked up yet. It is sitting on the cabin sole. The box in the picture was brought in the trunk of a compact car of the truck driver’s boss. He met him in Craiova, which is about 35 miles from here. But the biggest challenge was getting it down the stone steps to the gangplank of the pontoon. Christi and Marian did it all. Right now Marian took the whole transmission and my old coupling, that fits around the propellor shaft, to be ground down to fit. And then I’ll be working on lining up everything. It still is going to be a lot of fitting and adjusting.  It was drizzling and miserable this morning but it looks like the weather is improving. 

During the night I was rudely awakened. The boat who made the enormous wake was long gone but the wake was at least 5 times more violent than I have experienced from any passing ships, here in Calafat. It threw the boat up against the pontoon four times and the starboard rub rail is completely busted. Fortunately it is the rail that needs to be replaced any way from damage to the mid and forward section. I guess that had to be some fast patrol boat.  “Fleetwood” looks like it got caught in the Bosnian war. For the next hour there was this constant clinking of glass bottles against the hull. The maniac boat had washed all the accumulated shore side bottles back into the Danube. That is the “down”side of living “in”side a Stradivarius. 

I hope that America gets its house in order soon. In the 6 weeks since I came here I have to pay $ 10 more to buy $170 (500 Lei) worth of exchange.  That hurts. That is a 6% drop in the dollar.