Little or no progress in solving my prop problem. There are no 13 x 9 folding props out there that I can afford. A new one is over $ 1000….. So, I decided to go for a search for the lost treasures. In the dive shop there is a very nice young Bulgarian, Martin, who has lived in Holland and speaks good Dutch. We went out to the spot where I suspect the blades to have found their new home. But the local marina crew chased us away. They are sending their own diver down to take a look…

Option B is to mount my fixed prop. But it now turns out that this marina has no good cradle available to hoist me on to. One of their men, with his diving gear, tried for over an hour to pull the shaft, but it would not budge. The rubber flexes but is firmly fused to the shaft. I can get the boat lifted at the other marina but their shore property is in the high rent district of the closest parking lot to the town and that starts adding up fast. It is still a total mystery to me how these flex couplings work and why it does not come loose. I hope to talk the marina people here into lifting with the mobile crane and keep me in the slings with the keel to the ground and then have an automotive axle/hub puller at the ready to try and wrestle the shaft loose.

Then the boat can go back in the water and push the shaft back in after we have mounted the propeller replacement.

This evening I decided to forego cooking my own dinner. I had a shrimp appetizer and lamb. This is definitely a great place to have a vacation. Today I talked to a couple young ladies who sail the Olympic Class 470 dinghy. They had competed last year in Scheveningen and knew Marieke Jongens, the daughter of Cees Jongens who has just returned from a circumnavigation, which included Nhatrang Viertnam. Where “Fleetwood” visited in 2006. I met him last summer in his home town, Hoorn. The Bulgarians were Janna and Eva, they knew some Dutch. Real dolls.

I posted a manuscript to Crusing World today about the Danube voyage. I hope they like it.

From a comment today on the blog I learned that a fairly well known advertising consultant/web guru in Holland, Themelis Cuiper, recommended reading my site. I am flattered.