Anybody miss me?

No, I don't expect you did, as I was staying with most of you, my Teeming Dozen, much of the time I was not blogging. Well.

We had planned to go sailing immediately upon our return, except that the weather was filthy. Really disgusting, rain and hail and god knows what all. So we sat around until Tuesday when I pointed out to Dearly Beloved that we were stuck inside when it rained anyway, so we might as well be stuck in a boat as in a house. So off we went, flags gaily waving -- er, well, actually not gaily waving as Daan decided to check out the consistency of a couple rules of physics and threw our flag over board in the harbor right before we left. The Belgian who was moored right next to us helped us in our attempts to drag the harbor for it, but he found it just awfully funny and offered to loan us his extra (Belgian) one. Dearly Beloved was not especially amused and was even less amused when I offered to put up an American flag.

However, we steamed off in good order, even though the boat was unaccountable difficult to handle and made quite a lot of racket, even for a diesel motor. So we stopped in the lovely Biesbos, a forest preserve, and checked the motor over. It was working fine and we began to think it was some kind of timing problem.

"Timing problem" is Dearly Beloved's code way of saying "I have no idea". In the South where I grew up, the code phrase is "It's yer lankidge'" or at least it was when I had a series of junkers. It was always my linkage, no matter what it actually was.

So I stepped into the boat to get some more coffee. Please note for future reference: do not step into a boat when your husband has removed the ladder in order to get at the motor which is in the middle of the boat. It hurts quite a lot when your foot discovers there is no ladder there and it leads to your small children remembering words they have not heard since you had to move continents in less than three weeks about a year ago. It also leaves a bloody scrape and beautiful technicolor bruises. And causes your husband to say things like, "but I thought you knew I moved it, I was looking at the motor after all,".

After the blue streak in the air cleared from my multilingual swearing session and first aid was administered to the dying, Paul decided to go into the water and see if it could be the aforementioned flag, which might have fouled the motor blades. Please note, the water in Holland is very, very cold just now, so this was a very brave thing to do. He came immediately back up, only a trifle blue, and announced that he was now certain that the motor was fine.

Because one of the blades on the motor was missing. By this time it was already afternoon, so we decided to just stay there until morning. No sense in running home, the repair place would be closed anyway. So we played many rounds of snakes & ladders and walked around in the woods and killd pirates and picked many flowers and so on. Even the wildflowers in Holland are civilized, all the purple ones grow together and the yellow ones and so on. We ate a lot of blackberries and Daan had another practical lesson in why you do not try to pick a nettle. I swear, he will never learn. Hard headed, that child.

Then we went home to find that the boat cannot be repaired until Monday, as the repair guy is on vacation until then. So we may be going to the Breda Balloon Festival this weekend after all.