Originally we had planned to touch water again end of April. But because of invitation for the Linssen Easter Tour, we asked Harry van der Laan, the owner of the Maasbracht hal we had stored Cómplice for winter, to make an exception on our and his planning. Though his crane seemed to be fully booked in these hectic days just before Easter - with excellent wheather forecasting - he pleasantly cooperated, and so did Erwin Schuller who had to de-winterize.
We hoped to be in time for watching our ship in the crane, but in vain. However this Thursday morning the rise was very early, our nearly 2 hours travel - because of the traffic jam around Eindhoven - made our arrival not before around 09:30. Too late, Cómplice just had touched water again, engine still running, everything working like we had left her 6 months before.
Erwin already done with mounting a new, and fresh new season impeller, and also taken care of some new antifouling on the nose (as we discouvered when we visited the hall one time in December, some missing because of our "mooring with the nose on the Maurik beaches), as well as he had polished the propellor (because of our hit of a shopping car or bicycle in Gouda last season). Also a new and better opening device of front window had been mounted - a modification on request of Linssen, without running the risk of getting ones fingers between.
Wondering what happened with the broken bolts of the (hand) dieselpump. We had message from Linssen, that they experienced simular problems with same Volvo D 2-55 type, and wished Volvo to look at it. We learned that a day before Volvo had looked at it and had fixed the broken bolts but obviously in same way they had been mounted before. Frankly we were not too sure it would work - no message about specific cause of this break for 2nd time, and the fixing looked the same.
But apart from this, all worked fine - and even the wheather cooperated beautifully, so making a start with loading the blankets, equipments, all the other household and not too forget our food and wine storage, we had not left behind when leaving the ship for winter. In a few hours we were ready for the practice tour. One hour max, not more this day as we still had to do some shopping, supermarket as well as schipchandler Wim Houben to visit. Apart from buying some cleansing stuff, we needed to pump the fenders - which Wim did in a few seconds with his compressor as a service.
That was all - ready to go - ignition. The sound and the feeling being very familiar when I turned the key..
Season 2007 has started!
Next: Linssen Easter Tour
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