Nicu, the #3 mechanic did show up today. He appeared to be a little more knowledgeable than the previous one. He determined that the old Renault is toast. Not enough compression any longer and the oil was not getting pumped up through the top of the engine and was most likely the reason the rocker arm broke.

So I am shopping for a reconditioned engine or a new one. Right now there is little available in the former and I’ll be spending my children’s heritage.

Now why was I not surprised that after waiting all afternoon for Nicu, Mechanic # 3, that he did not show up? So, another promise, tomorrow at 10 a.m. I am not holding my breath.

But I finally have some good news. I am typing this from my broken down and given up for dead 2007 HP laptop…. I had several “experts” looking at it in Germany and the verdict was that once again the hard disk had failed and there was no way to fix it. Son #2 is sending me a new lap top. So, yesterday, in total boredom, decided to take my two broken laptops to a shop. The young man speaks reasonably good Italian. The main problem apeared to be with the key board. He sold me an exterior USB connected keyboard and installed Windows 7 all for 140 Lei ( $ 43.50). Now we may have cheated Bill Gates a bit in the process but, what the heck, he owes me a few for not being able to get any answers on how I can reinstall my MS Office that I have paid for a couple times too often.  And now the original keyboard works as well, after all. Now I can do something else than reading books. I have a bunch of writing and photo organizing projects. I have found two nice warm wireless restaurants and now I do not have to pay the internet cafe and be squeezed between the rug rats playing their war games. The morning/lunch restauarant/cafe has a waitress and the owner who speak English well.

So, things are looking up on one front.

I have been taking pictures of boat names, starting on the Chesapeake where every “waterman” ‘s boat has a woman’s name. So, today I sorted out a number of them and you might be lucky and get yours sent for your desk top back ground or, if you’re not happy with the way you look, you can use it for your Facebook profile picture.

This one is for daughter # 1.

This morning when I asked the officer on duty at the Harbormaster office to make a call for me to Nico the potential third mechanic, he was short and irritated. He told me that the winter is arriving in 7 days and that my moorage will be a problem. Looks like I might be wearing their patience thin. Florin and the other officer have been very kind to me but they are only on two days and then off for the rest of the week.

The auto part store who gave me Nico’s address called him and he will be here tomorrow afternoon , with a pressure gauge. There is not a whole lot of things to do in this weather than read in the cold cabin. The clouds and the tinted windows make it necessary to read with lights. I am still handicapped with the bad right eye, which is not making much progress any longer. The last time I was able to have an intelligent conversation was with the passing through Australian campers. I think that if I run into anyone who can speak any of my five or so languages I am going to chain them to a table in a coffee shop and talk and listen for 24 hours straight.

No pictures of a church service this time. I have requested your prayers to get me out of this Godforsaken place and unless you don’t get serious there will be a picture of a sunset on every blog till I am out of here. There is little that I get from the local Orthodox service and I feel a bit of an intruder by not being able to keep up with their signs of the cross ( in the reverse direction) every 5 minutes. And the chairs all belong to individual parishioners. August 29th was the last time, in Bratislava, that I was able to participate at mass and receive Holy Communion. By next weekend that will be the longest period since I did my first communion. The previous time was at the first crossing of the Pacific from Santa Barbara to the Marquesas, in 2005.

It was cold and rained off and on today, so I was boatbound, reading. “Reizen tot op het Bot” is written by a reincarnated Polar Bear. It’s all about places like New Georgia, Falklands, Faroer, Iceland, Nova Zembla. Snow, storms. Great writing and research but it depresses me. I wonder if the library here has something morte uplifting with Palm trees in it in a language I can understand.

These guys actually managed to pass me:

Just upstream from Budapest, August 31

A while longer and I’ll be able to be one of the first Americans to cross the Danube from Romania to Bulgaria across the new bridge a building between Calafat and Vidin. I had lost track of the week day and just realized that I have to wait now till Monday to call the third potential Romanian mechanic. After the back and forth e-mails to Holland and Germany about the next possible action. The one engine in Holland that was reasonably priced and the right dimensions has been sold and it is not as easy as shopping here on the internet because of the number of languages in the surrounding countries.

Summer is gone here and it skipped Fall. The temperature has dropped to about 50 Fahrenheit. I saw a market lady with earmuffs. Except for the news headlines in a daily e-mail from the NRC I have no idea what is happening in the world. There is not one single radio station I can understand. But soon I’ll be able to eat my heart out in French when all the Romas are sent back here by Sarcozy.

I have been reading a lot. I finally finished “Shantaram”, next “Rond de Wereld met een Glimlach” by Cees de Reus and now I am reading “Reizen op het Bot” by Eerde Beukelaar. A “passant” , guest, at de Schinkel, Marc de Graaf, gave me the book last year summer. Good sailing stories. But what always amazes me is that just about every writer of sailing books tries to cast himself in a particular category. And mostly by disapproving all the other shades and colors. The power boaters, the racers, the rich, the organized regatta crossings, the Americans, Fiberglass,  and so on. I have a hard time understanding why sailing is really that different from other sports and pastimes and ways to travel. The dangers are overly dramatized the sea over romanticized. But then if I would ever write a book I would not tell any one either my honest feelings about sailing that it is just a way to get to see the world in your own home at a fraction of the cost per mile of most other means of travel.