Oct 26 1st On the road again

Written by Jack van Ommen on October 29th, 2010

I am at anchor at KM 739 43.50.50 N 23.16.40 E, just down stream from Lom, Bulgaria.
That is a 50 k.m. day. I did not get the anchor up in Calafat till 11.30 I went to check my mail at the O.K. Restauarant at 9 a.m. and to say good bye to the ladies who took such good care of me and to Claudio the manager. Christi came at 9.30 to have a farewell coffee with me. Last night we had a drink together at Neru’s pontoon, with Marian. Neru filled up my two 20 liter canisters with Diesel at a very reasonable rate. I decided to get a few clothing items for the cold weather at the local market. I did not bring much in the way of winter wear since I had expected to be in Turkey before the winter. Yesterday I bought warm training pants. Today I added two sets of tites, long underwear with feet. Two pair of warm socks. The market lady was so sweet and made sure I had the right sizes. Beautiful smile even though she is missing  a few teeth. Then I wanted something that just does not exist in even the most outrageously priced foul weather gear and that is an outer garment that is water proof after using it a couple times. So I ended up spending $ 8 on a knee lengths camouflage vinyl coat. Wait till I tie up at the  Saint Francis Yacht Club and walk in in my Romanian foul weather gear….  The sales man decided to try the one other language than Romanian he knew on me. Bingo!  Dutch. He had lived in Holland. His daughter works in a Wassenaar restaurant. All the other stall owners who by now had seen me every day in the market could not figure out how I could be in this lively conversation with one of them. He made sure that everyone around him was made aware that he can speak a totally weird language. He got a bit carried away when another potential customer asked him a question he answered him in Dutch…

I did not like the amount of vibration in the engine so, after the first few k.m.’s I put the anchor down and messed with the engine mounts once again for a couple hours. This has helped but it is not a permanent fix. What I had noticed when connecting the drive shaft is that I need to replace the cutlass bearing. There is a lot of play in the shaft. I have done this once before in 2004 and all the motoring has worn it down once again. Replacing the cutlass bearing needs to be done out of the water. The engine also kept losing rpm’s and then coming back. But that has worked it self out. I am keeping at just around 2000 r.p.m., which is probably around 65% of it’s capacity but it gives me 12 k.m.s. per hour, with the current and that is as good as the old engine could do. I need to run the engine in anyway and needs to stay at a modest speed. I like the fact that the block and the radiator keep the cabin nice and comfortable for a couple hours.

 

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