August 23rd, 2010

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Monday August 23rd Passau

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

With a little luck I will have a laptop again in the next two weeks. Seth and John have come to the rescue. Right now I am in an internet cafe in Passau. There is no way to add pictures because these computers do not allow USB connections.

I left Kelheim last Friday in the early afternoon after posting my last blog and getting fuel at the marina. I made it to Regensburg by early evening. I tried to get into the marina in downtown Regensburg. I had to double back against the current after passing through the locks. I had been warned that the current can run very strong under the old Steinbruecke. I was making very little progress but when I finally got to the Steinbruecke I started bouncing on the bottom. The sun was setting and blinded me and was unable to read my depthsounder, so I had to double back and find a spot further down river in the Regensburg Marina. The caretaker, Rolf, let me use his laptop for emails. Early in the morning I rode into Regensburg. I had the same problem there finding an internet connection with a USB port but I did find a good pharmacist who fixed me up with an ointment for the right eye and pills to fight the Herpes infections. In Nuernberg I tried to get an eye doctor to look at it but they did not take walk ins. It is getting better and less painful but has not cleared up yet and I have difficulty reading signs in the distance. I had wanted to stay the Sunday in Regensburg but it was such a nice day to travel that I decided to push on to Deggendorf. I passed through two locks the first was a 1 1/2 hour wait and the next took just twenty minutes. But still managed to make the 93 kms by 7 p.m. because my speed has now gone up, with the current, to about 16/18 kms per hour. The Austrian couple, Josef and Margiet, had arrived earlier in the same marina. We had a very nice evening there with some of the other members of the motor boat club. Bob and Lilly Berensen from the Schinkel YC had been there a few days earlier, according to the guest register. I will probably run into them when they come back to Kelheim from Vienna. I am not the first American sailboat to make this trip. A couple from Jacksonville took their 36 footer this route but since none of you have answered my earlier invitations I have now withdrawn them and go for the Guiness Book of Records as the first American to do it singlehanded as part of a singlehanded world circumnavigation. There are a few stranded dreams of boats for sale along my route, from people who have given up for different reasons. Like the boats you find in Neah Bay, San Diego, etc.

I went to mass in the beautiful old Pfarr Kirche in Deggendorf. Our Lady of the Assumption. The pictures will be added later. It has a gorgeous gold altar. The organist played well and fortisimo. It has been in the high seventies and people are playing all along the Danube´s shores. Swimming, water skiing, on the weekend. I spent about two hours with a very nasty dirty job. A few days I stopped to fix a cooling water problem. From a sailboat to stinkpotter I had now become a Steam Boat. After I took the pump apart and found nothing wrong it turned out that blowing on the water intake hose I had fixed the problem. But apparently the hot engine block had melted the corner of the plastic Vetus muffler and water had filled the engine bilge and spilled over into the cabin bilge. Fortunately I carried a spare muffler. Onward to Passau after pushing off after 4 p.m. I made it by 7.45 p.m. to Heining.KM 2232 There is no moorage in Passau and I took my bike into Passau this morning. I will be in Austria KM 2223 later this afternoon and then should be in Vienna KM 1935 this weekend.