Easter in Toulon 2005
On Our way down to Toulon in France we stopped over night in the beautiful village Riquewhir in the middle of the wine-district of Alsace. We had got this recommendation from our friends Pia and Pege from JRSK.
With the car full of valuable equipment we wanted to park as safely as possible. WE therefore gratefully accepted to park in the private garage of "Hotel Saint Nicolas", which the owner of the hotel offered us .
In this garage he had a Peugeot from 1932 - a veteran in very good shape. In this beautiful car he drove us a short way to his wine cellar for a glass. Under this trip we were asked if we would like to dinner with him and his wife which we gladly accepted.
After a short time we drove to a nearby village where he had a table reserved at the best restaurant. His own restaurant hadn't opened yet - it was too early for the season. At the restaurant he informed us that he would like to see us as his guests and should be treated like that.
The dinner began with a glass of champagne. To the first dish which consisted of snails and "pate de foie gras" we had a wonderful Gewurztraminer. In general the food is much like the German kitchen with rather heavy plain food.
The language in this part of France is worth a special chapter. As Alsace is situated near that part of Germany called Schwaben the local language is much like the German dialect called Schwäbisch. The intonation is also more like French than German. As I have worked for many years with a contractor from Baden-Baden I have learned to understand quite a lot of this Schwäbisch and could understand rather much of this local dialect. Our host and hostess spoke alternately French and German with Anna-Karin and me and after a couple of hours we returned to the hotel - very much satisfied after a successful evening.
The next day we drove the rest of the route to Toulon. The Unicorn lay as Anna-Karin saw her when she had a look at her in November last year.
Most of what we had expected to do was done and now remains only polishing and bottom-painting before launching.
This propeller-shaft bearing was changed with hard work because the old one had begun to wear. At first we had thought of changing only the insert but it turned out to be impossible to get loose in spite of good advice from Volvo Penta. Remarkably enough V. P in Toulon succeeded in getting necessary details within 24 hours. That we hadn't expected.
We also changed batteries to new ones. It feels good to have done that before
starting our long sailing later this year.
The roll-genoa mechanism was also cleaned and greased up.
I also changed the impeller and u-seal in the sea-water pump on the engine.. The
old toilet was also changed and a new one is now installed.
This is what happened when the truck taking the
boats for launching one day came too near the quay. Fortunately nobody was hurt
- either men or boats.
Even the truck got away without damages.
That was all for this time . We will be back with more in the beginning of July.
Anna-Karin and Håkan