We were up again at 6am but, because today was again forecast to be high-30s, we took our time with a slow breakfast, and then finally left our A/C room around 11am to drive to Auxonne. We arrived before noon, and had a quick lunch, before Rita went shopping for some essentials, while I settled down to do some urgent work on the boat.

In early March, I had received an email from H2O (the port operators) telling me that storm Freya had come through the north-east of France and done damage to several boats at Auxonne and St Jean de Losnes, including Kanumbra which had had the bimini lifted and partially detached. They did some emergency repairs and tethered the bimini to the wheelhouse as shown below. This was not the first time that the bimini had been lifted by strong winds, so we were just grateful that they had acted quickly and secured the bimini to the boat.

When we  arrived today, the bimini was in the same position, and had in fact done a good job of protecting the wheelhouse rear doors from the elements over winter. So much so that in future, I will detach the bimini, as part of the winterising process, and secure it to the back of the boat in a more permanent manner. This will protect the doors, and save us from worrying about what might happen to the bimini in any strong winter storms. A further advantage that I discovered was that the bimini was much easier to clean when it was in the position shown in the photo. And it definitely did need a clean as shown by the photo below. This is not a light and shade effect; this is a cleaned and not-cleaned effect.

Having cleaned the bimini, it was now time to assess the damage and re-erect the bimini so that the rear deck could be made useful again. Surprisingly, there was relatively little damage to the bimini. The struts that support the bimini railing above the rear deck railing had come loose. The right strut (as shown above) had become separated from the bimini railing at the top, while the left strut had become separated from the rear deck railing at the bottom. It was just a matter of re-connecting these struts, straightening them up, re-securing some screws holding the bimini onto the wheelhouse roof and them tightening some straps that hold the bimimi down to the rear deck railing. I also installed some new cross-bracing between the struts to prevent the assembly from warping too much.

While fixing the bimini, I started talking to two young guys who arrived in port with their families (3 generations) on a hire boat. Despite the hot weather over the past week, they had thorougly enjoyed the experience and were sad to be giving the boat back tomorrow. They were obviously Americans, and when I asked where in America they were from, they said that they came from the Rochester NYS area. When I mentioned that I had lived for 5 years in Ithaca NYS, we had an immediate point of commonality.

The day continued very hot, with only a late cooling breeze making it bearable. At this point, we were both grateful that we could enjoy the breeze sitting on the rear deck with a drink.