2014-04-02

Arnd

2014 Trip 2014-04-02

I’d discussed touring the Fort with the crew of Katzenellenbogen the previous day and we’d thought about a morning visit, but it was about 15:00 before we actually got going, with Ken from Rocking B driving his luxurious dinghy with myself, Philaine and several garbage bags aboard while Stephen drove Tayne and Michaela aboard theirs – luckily my anemic and inferior dinghy got to stay in the anchorage. Ken’s dinghy is a large one, with a 4-stroke 20 HP engine and small console with real seats, it carves it’s way through the waters rather than pounding on top of them as does mine. We soon arrived at the dinghy dock, disposed of our garbage and were climbing the hillside road to the small hill overlooking town atop which is Fort Napoleon. Normally there’s a lot of moped and vehicle traffic going up and down this road, but it was oddly empty of passersby and once we’d reached the top we realized why – the museum is only open until 12:30 and closed in the afternoon. Although we couldn’t enter the Fort itself, we could walk around the battlements and enjoyed the scenic views from the hilltop before returning to town.

Although Philaine, Michaela and I had discussed walking back to the anchorage while the others rode in the dinghies, we ended up doing a bit of shopping and all of used the dinghies to get back rather than walk the 5+ kilometres. Upon my return I took a snorkel around the anchorage and got my first jellyfish sting, it got the top of my bald head and part of one arm but luckily the bite soon disappeared and by the time I was back aboard the boat the little red spots had also faded away; a good thing since I didn’t have normal vinegar, just some Aceto Balsamico and using that would have smelled nice but been a waste of fine vinegar.

Soon afterwards it was approaching sundown and Margaret and Ken from Rocking B had invited us over for sundowners. We chatted and talked for a long time and I got to see the great job that they’d done on modifying and “tuning” their boat to make it a very autonomous and seaworthy catamaran indeed.

Original hosting provider breaks my old website

My old hosting company, who will remain unnamed although their name starts with “go” and the end rhymes with “baddy”, changed their software with little notice and the original SV-ZANSHIN.COM site stopped working overnight.

Every. Single. Page.

So I’ve transitioned to another provider. These original pages have been migrated, but all the formatting and other features are gone and the will still contain numerous display issues and formatting anomalies.

The manual effort of conversion is too much and not worth the effort involved. Over 1000 blog diary pages like this one are going to remain in this condition. The pictures are full-scale, but won’t expand when clicked. But you can can copy them to view them in their original splendour.