Tuesday / Wednesday morning, 22 / 23 October 2019

Pretty well everything is done, and initially it was a fairly relaxed day.

We were planning to go for a bike ride in the afternoon, but decided to not go ahead with this as the wind picked up steadily.  It funnelled down the river, and there were quite strong gusts, causing Equinox to both swing within the berth and roll a little.  All of this was pushing us back and the stern was much closer to the pontoon than it had been previously. None of this was helped by the marina having asked us to give one of the lazy lines, securing the bow, to the boat that came in next to us.  There was no way of pulling Equinox forward on the remaining lazy line, so after a discussion with our Dutch neighbours, we managed to secure the bows of the two boats together, reducing the swinging.

We consulted the marina staff and changed the time of the lift out on Wednesday to a time that the wind was forecast to have dropped.

During the evening, the wind continued to rise and we were still moving around in the water quite a lot.  Additional fenders were deployed to make sure that the boats did not touch. 

After we had eaten  and were watching a film, we were aware of a burning smell.  We rushed to check if it was something in the boat, which it wasn’t, so we went on deck.  We were greeted by the sight of the hillside opposite in flames.  It was fascinating and frightening to watch.  There were several walls of flame, burning in different colours, moving steadily across the hillside, being fanned by the, by now, very strong wind. We learned later that the hillside away from us, that we could not see, was also alight, and that people had been evacuated from the buildings closest to the fire. I don’t think it was possible to attempt to try to fight the fire during night, and by morning, it had mostly burnt itself out.  As we watched, we could feel the ash getting in our eyes, being carried across on the wind. We were pleased to have a river between us and the fire for protection, and hoped that the wind direction, which was carrying the worst of the smoke and ash away from us, would not change.  Daylight revealed a certain amount of ash on the deck, but no damage to the boat. We also found that no-one had been injured.

The wind is still very strong on Wednesday morning, too much for us to be able to move the boat to the lifting dock, so we have changed the lift time again, and hopefully the wind will die down a bit later.

To be continued…..

Distance covered today	0	nautical miles
Trip distance covered	549	nautical miles
Distance covered 2019	1602	nautical miles

Steve (and Tricia)