I knew it wouldn’t last long - Day 2 and I’m wide awake at 0400hr. Luckily I had loaded a book onto the iPad so that I could catch up with my backlog of John Grisham novels. This time I’m reading “Sycamore Row”.

While puddling around on the barge doing various odd jobs, Nico dropped by with his angle grinder to do a little job for me. At the end of last year we realised that we had lost the key to the u-lock that secured one of the bikes (the old one that came with the barge) to the railing on the deck. Since I plan to repaint the deck in the next week, I needed to get the bike removed, so Nico came over and in a few seconds had cut through the bolt with the grinder (not all that secure, but I guess you’d hear a thief with an angle grinder!). We have hardly ever used this bike, so both Nico and I were pleased when he said that he would be interested in taking it with him and doing the required maintenance to get it back in shape for him to use around town - a win-win situation. We then had a long talk about progress on the house, plans for its completion, and life in general. A very satisfying morning.

In the afternoon (and evening) I had to knuckle down and complete the DBA (Barge Association) eNewsletter, of which I am the editor. I figured it would be nice to get the May edition out while it was still May! So after many hours of sourcing material, writing, editing photos, preparing the mailing list and getting clearance from the DBA Chairperson, I was finally able to push the Send button in MailChimp to send the May edition into the ether.