OK, today was a public holiday; everything was closed, including the supermarket – which means Ian does not have enough wine for tonight!  Bad planning.  But I thought he had an unopened box, turns out he opened it a few days ago.  By the way, a box here is 3 litres not 5 litres.

Last night Ian entertained himself by whittling a flag pole to fit into the flag pole holder on the bow to hold our new yacht club burgee.  And here it is, the Ijzervaarders or Portus Dixmuda burgee

The weather was awful today. The wind started howling in the middle of the night.  The boat healed over and moved around quite a lot within the restrictions of the mooring lines.  But that was bareable.  The bad bit was that the wind direction caused the boat to move away from the pontoon so that the fenders were hanging free and the one right by our bed was dancing around madly in the wind and banging into the hull.  No sleep!  Every time I started dropping off a gust would blow through and start the fender slamming around again!  Humpphhh!

The offending fender

At about 8 it started raining so Ian didn’t bother to get up.  Grabbed his tablet and spent an hour in the warm comfy bed watching I don’t know what.

After the rain stopped I took a walk to check if any supermarkets were open (to buy some wine) but they weren’t and while I was away Ian met the man who is on “havenmeester” (harbour master) duty this week.   For the last few years he has spent 4 to 5 months of the year in France and knows the area we are planning to go to very well. He told Ian to bring his charts this afternoon so we could go through them together.  What a mine of information!  We spent 2 hours with him and he gave lots of tips and information on the locks and mooring places.  Turns out that there are now almost no places you can get free electricity anymore.  It seems this is due to abuse by visiting boats who tie up for the whole winter. Free water is still available in some places.

Again I spent a few hours route planning but when I got back from out meeting with the havenmeester I redid my notes!

Ian spent some time cleaning the engine room (yuck, lots of grease in hard to get at places) and then installed a heat temperature alarm (I think) for the engine.  Rather a complicated procedure.   He bought all the components separately for €11 and put it together himself. Off the shelf it would have cost €150. 

He has been moaning about the temperature of his red wine since we moved onto the boat.  Well, put it this way: I don’t bother to put my rose wine in the fridge.  And red wine is not quite palatable at the same temperature as rose wine.