We hauled the boat out Tuesday in the worst weather we've seen since we've been here: pouring rain and 25 to 30 mph winds. For those of you in the boating community, they use the Beaufort scale for weather forecasts here (for those of you not in the boating community, there's always Google) and at the coast the weatherpeople were talking Force 9, inland force 7 to 8. It was abysmal! Wednesday was slightly better with only occasional rain but still windy. Luckily they put us in a shed because the welder had to replace the outside cooling pipes and its hard to weld in the rain. Today was sunny with only occasional clouds; still windy but no rain. Even the bicyclists were smiling.
The word from Kurt, the yard manager, is that we should be in the water Monday afternoon. We've made arrangements to stay in the place we're in until Monday so we figure we'll be moving onto the boat then. We went to IKEA last week and worked the credit card pretty hard so we should be ready to go. There is nothing but coffee cups on the boat; no bedding, cooking utensils, plates, silverware ... nothing. Sort of like moving into the first college apartment, only this time we have some money to spend.
The bungalow we're staying in now is in another interesting place. We're guessing it used to be a farm on the polder (Google, again) and the family turned it into a summer cabin site and campground. It's just across the Spikerboor Channel (the "campground" is called Spikerboor) from Kaag the headquarters of one of the world's major megayacht builders, Feadship. Kaag is basically an island; you have to ride a ferry to get there, sort of like Balboa Island, near Newport, used to be. Spikerboor has a large area that is taken up by small summer cabins and an area set aside as a campground, a very organized, tidy, Dutch sort of campground. Some of the caravans (like our travel trailers) are also set up as summer homes: they're semi-permanent with add-on canvas rooms. We really don't have anything equivalent in the States but it reminds me of some of the summer settlements around Clear Lake in northern California.
The yard put the first coat of primer on the bottom this afternoon, I got the galley counter ripped out and bought the material for the replacement. Cathy Jo got another coat of primer on the head/shower floor. We bought the new stove today (really!, not a Wolfe) and it looks like this whole thing is coming together. The last couple of weeks have definitely not been a vacation but we see the proverial light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. No proverb: we should be sailing soon.
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