After having solved all the known maintenance problems, I went looking for the still undiscovered ones and found that one of the backstays was a little bit pulled up from the deck. A small steel plate fixed from below would solve this problem – the kind of steel angle that can always be found at a shipyard or even at a scrapyard… But of course not when you really need one… So 10 minutes later my Dad and I were on our way to the hardware store, an easy bus ride away or so we thought… But because of a street market happening there was no bus service in the morning going by the Yachtclub and we had to walk to the next bus stop. Once there the posted timetable indicated that the bus had just passed by a few minutes before and that we had to wait for half an hour for the next one to come by. OK then…we decided to walk to the next stop… and of course, after we had walked down the street for 200 meters, the bus passed right by us! And we kept walking for several kilometres in the sweltering heat until we were about halfpoint on our way when I spotted an ‘M’ shining in the sun over the bushes… a McDonalds. So we made a stop and enjoyed a deliciously fresh milkshake. A few kilometres later we finally arrived where we wanted to be. We went around searching the entire hardware store ten times before we found a steel plate that would fit perfectly. When we left the store we saw the bus coming by and sprinting we managed to catch it at the very last moment. We were so comfortably seated that we missed the Yachtclub stop, and so we decided to keep going all the way to the supermarket. We did our groceries shopping but then we forgot the eggs for the pancakes. But happily, the people at the Yachtclub restaurant were so kind, and they gave us some eggs so that in the evening we finally could enjoy our pancakes in the cockpit.

Laura

Same place, 15 years in between.