Thursday 28 July, Tulcea. The portal to the Danube Delta

Written by Jack van Ommen on July 28th, 2011

I am enjoying a cool Beck’s draft on the deck of the “Republica” restaurant boat. “Fleetwood” is parked along side. The “Republica” was originally the “Linz” and Austrian paddle wheeler steamer and served also in the Romanian navy. The captain here will give me a tour of the machine room.

Yesterday evening I went to dinner to a really nice local Galati restaurant, serving mostly Italian dishes, with Mark Geertsma and his lady friend. I had Linguine fruti di mare. Excellent. Only Lynne Poland’s Linguine a la Vongole is better than that.  Afterwards Mark had me over to his flat. He has a large collection of Elvis Presley L.P.’s and a state of the art turn table and sound system I discovered that that Presley did have a great voice and that I enjoyed listening to these songs. Mark also showed me a little more of Galati and, contrary to my earlier blogs, it still has some older sections that are well preserved. Mark’s company, Romtech, furnished the interiors on the Damen coast guard cutters that I wrote about in my “Logs” out of Vietnam. My very first moorage in HaiPhong, in 2006, was along one of those patrol ships. I was very impressed with the luxurious interiors, the mess, day room, showers, and the Vietnamese “coasties” who treated me so well.

I motor sailed today, most of the way. I ran into Daniel, from Leipzig in his canvas kayak. I had met Daniel in Rouse, where he took off from. He is doing the Danube from Regensburg, Germany in three parts, one per year. He spotted “Fleetwood” yesterday afternoon on his way through Galati and came along side.  Daniel took some pictures of me sailing. I also heard from George (GiGi) from the pumping station, that he will mail me some pictures of passing under the last Danube bridge, under sail.

Tulcea, being at the head of the Danube Delta, has a lively tourist influx, from all over Europe. You can choose your day or over night tour into the shallow branches of the delta. For most Europeans there are not a lot of Deltas like the Danube. In the United Sates we have a lot more choices. And for me it is, in a way, just another, river Delta. “Fleetwood” has been into so many river deltas, Fraser, Sacramento, St. John’s in Florida, a number on the Chesapeake Bay, Savannah, Surinam in Dutch Guyana,  Kinabatangan in Malaysian Borneo, Paraiba in N.E.Brazil, etc.
I discovered, last night, testing the wiring on the mast head, that I may need to take another hoist to the mast head. The lens of the tri color was put on wrong. Oh, well.

The picture below invites your judgement. I have been taking many pictures of boat names that match those of good friends/relatives and I send them to use as their screen saver. If you have not received on yet, have patience, your ship will also come in. Sometimes I cheat a little with my photo software. Do you think that I can send the below to the White House? Since Bin Laden is busy with the 1000 virgins I cannot mail his version to him.

And here are some more pictures of to day’s travels.

 

 

 

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