General Witterings -
Ensigns and Engines on Rosy

Fanny the Woof continues to prosper.  Apart from her beloved Aerobie (like a Frisbee but infinitely better) she has developed into a very good ball player.  She participates in the following sports:

Football (played with a tennis ball): She is a brave and excellent goal-keeper.

Cricket: She is a fine close fielder, specialising at second slip.  She is good on the boundary, where, although she has a weak throwing leg, her "return of the ball by running back with it" is quite superb.  Her batting matches that of most fast bowlers (i.e.  her ability to bat is non-existent).

Rugby: She runs with the ball very well, but is weak at catching the high balls and her passing game lets her down.

Squash: She took time to master the skills of getting to a ball that bounces off a wall, but she persevered and now has considerable mastery of the game.  (And her nose is healing nicely).

Tennis: I think it is better to concentrate on things that she is good at.

Rounders/Baseball: Her hitting game is weak, but she merits her team-place by her outstanding running and fielding.

VISIT TO NEUZELLE

Neuzelle is a small village not too far from our mooring.  In it, there is a magnificent monastic church, which has been well maintained/restored.  The surrounding buildings are still in need of some love and cherishing.  The church is famed for its very heavily ornamented interior.  It looks as if it is bunged full of marble and granite statues and columns.  The statues look as if they were carved from glistening white marble, and many of them are ornamented with gold leaf.  On the day of my visit, it was extremely cold outside, and even colder in the church, and I found it very hard to get any information about the ornamentation.  I was very suspicious of it all - several of the barley-sugar columns that looked like marble had cracks in them, and I guessed that they were actually carved from wood, and then cunningly painted to look like marble.  The statues, I have since been assured, are made of gypsum.  It is quite a sight, though one is (or, rather, I was) left wondering "why bother".  I felt that the time, effort and expense could all have been better deployed elsewhere.  I would be pleased to hear the views of anyone else who has visited this place.

On the way back, we took a close look at the River Oder.  We can only leave here when its winter behaviour is modified.  No sign of that yet.  It is running high and fast, and big ice-floes are being swept along it.

ENSIGNS

I have finally achieved a long standing ambition.  During the course of this European voyage, I have come across half a dozen UK registered vessels flying the Blue Ensign rather than the Red Ensign.  The Red Ensign is the one that British registered vessels are supposed/required to fly on those occasions when it is appropriate/necessary to fly an ensign.  The Blue Ensign is flown by vessels belonging to the members of certain designated yacht clubs who have applied for, and been granted, an admiralty warrant so to do.  Even then, the Blue Ensign must be defaced - generally by having the emblem of the yacht club sewn onto it - and the vessel must also fly the club burgee.

Now, why people who have been through these hoops, and who are authorised to fly the defaced Blue Ensign, should adopt such a superior and snooty attitude towards other vessels is a conundrum.  Certainly, 5 out of the 6 or so boats I have encountered have had a very strange attitude towards other boaters.

It's not even a money thing.  Some of the yacht clubs involved have annual membership fees of under a tenner, and the Admiralty warrant costs a mere £25 and lasts for five years.  And it's another £25 (approximately) to register the boat on the Small Ships Register for five years … which one is required to do if one wishes to enter the European waterway system.

So, I've spent a while jumping through all these hoops, and can now fly a defaced Blue Ensign - which, I hasten to add, I will only do on high days and holidays, and when another gin palace cruises by, adorned by a defaced Blue Ensign.  I am pretty much convinced that most of the owners of such vessels will be appalled by the sight of a narrow boat flying the flag!!

Several of the designated yacht clubs have restricted entry so that, for example to join RAFSA (The Royal Air Force Sailing Association) one has to have had some involvement with the RAF.  Other designated yacht clubs are open to all.  One (I think it is the Little Ships Club, or something like that) also has a club house in London that offers cheapish overnight accommodation for its members.

WINTER MAINTENANCE

Besides using the winter to modify Rosy, it is also the time for completing some maintenance tasks.  A particularly ghastly one is the refilling of the stern tube greaser.  This box of delights is located where the shaft that connects the engine to the propeller passes through the hull.  There is a problem in that one has to create a seal that will allow the shaft to turn, but will also stop water penetrating from outside the vessel to the inside.  The seal is called (I think) a stuffing box.  It is basically a cylindrical box stuffed full with some fibrous packing material, which is impregnated with grease.  A daily cruising chore is to give the packing material some grease, by giving half a turn on a handle that screws down, forcing in some grease from its reservoir.  Each year, the reservoir has to be refilled.  The grease is greasy, the weather was cold and, like many boaty jobs, there is restricted, cramped access.  I also have to lift up the cabin floor to access the prop-shaft to give the universal joints a greasing as well.  (My reward is an extra bottle of beer in the evening).

...AND THERE WAS LIGHT

Rosy has a rather nice looking electrified oil lamp in the back cabin.  The bulb is a bus bulb - not easy to get out here!!  It blew last week, so I spent 2 hours taking the lamp apart, with a view to modifying it to accept 10 or 20 watt halogen bulbs.  Again, much of the work was in cramped conditions, but we struggled on.  Then, when the lamp was in bits, I opened up the "electric bits box" to find … er … 3 spare bus bulbs!!!  Another 2 hours to get the lamp back together again, and a bit longer to decide what to do with the mysterious bits that always seem to be left over when I strip something down and then re-assemble it.  At times like this I follow the example of the skipper in "The Riddle of the Sands" who liked nothing better than an excuse to chuck stuff over the side.

RANT OF THE WEEK

It continues to amaze me how us Brits have permitted the motor car to rule our streets.  LOLs and LOGs (Little Old Ladies and Little Old Gents) even in bad weather, and even if laden down with shopping, are still expected to wait until the road is clear before crossing.  Even cars turning into side roads expect right of way over pedestrians despite what it says in the Highway Code.  Cyclists have a really tough time of it.

Here on the continent things are rather different.  Most countries ease restrictions on one-way-streets for cyclists, and most motorists have greater sympathy for pedestrians wishing to cross the road.  Though, for heavens sake, watch out in France where, until 3 years ago, the Gallic equivalent of the zebra crossing was, for motorists, merely advisory.  A dangerous minority of French motorists continue to regard it as such.

From Holland through to here in Germany we have been only slightly troubled by locks, and hence hills.  The flatness of the land encourages cycling, and the authorities take a great deal of trouble to encourage cycling.  Cycling, of course, cuts down on carbon emissions, and reduces health costs by increasing the physical activity of the population.  Nearly all roads (apart from residential areas) have cycle lanes, and cycle racks are provided in sensible places - such as outside shops and adjacent to bus stops.

That's it, folks - apart from some piccies of Rosy during the winter of 2004!

Bill