The day dawned bright and sunny, but that was as good as it got; from there on, the rest of the day was downhill! As I was working on the laptop in the wheelhouse, I got up to go downstairs to get some paperwork, and my foot got caught in the power cable to the laptop, which brought it crashing to the ground! Luckily, the laptop suffered no damage, but it landed on the adaptor plugged into the side of the laptop which converts the two Lightning connectors to various USB and other connectors. The impact damaged the adaptor and also one of the two 512GB USB drives that I had plugged into the adaptor. When I put it all together again, the 512GB drive that I was using as an extension to my laptop hard drive would no longer work. I could see that it was connected to the laptop, but it was not mounting and I could not see any of the 400GB of files (about 250,000 files) that I had on that USB drive (and which were not backed up anywhere, of course). I had tried everything I could think of, with no success, when Phil knocked on the door to see how things were going. I explained the situation to him, and as an act of desperation he suggested that I attach to USB drive to his PC laptop to see if anything could be recovered. I agreed, even though I didn't think it would make any difference. But, lo and behold, when he connected it to his PC, all the files appeared! So I got him to transfer them all to another 512GB USB drive, just in case I could never see them again on the original USB drive. It took a couple of hours, but I returned to Kanumbra much relieved.

Just in case I decided to wait and see whether I would travel home on October 14, we figured we should get our passports back from the Prefecture. So Rita contacted Ema (who was responding to her emails) and asked how we could get them back. Ema responded, saying that she couldn't find our application file containing the passports!! After we had panicked for an hour or so, Ema sent another email saying that she had found them and that we could come to the Prefecture tomorrow morning at 0800h to collect them (but don't be late, she said).

So, two distasters avoided in one day!

In the afternoon, Phil and I went out to the big shopping complex in Quetigny on the eastern edge of Dijon and went to the Leroy Merlin hardware store to find the materials we thought we'd need to re-attach the bimini to the wheelhouse. While we were there we went to the Darty appliances store to look at TVs and dehumidifiers (which I was looking for to dry out the condensation in the boat during the approaching colder weather). We finally found some dehumidifiers, after a long talk with a salesman who initially thought we were looking for humidifiers ("de humidifiers").

The third disaster of the day happened as I was getting off the boat in the early evening. I grabbed the side rail on the boat to step down onto the pontoon, but did not see the European wasp sitting on the side rail. But I certainly felt him/her! A sharp stinging sensation, which would not go away. I returned inside, and put ice on the sting, and then got some anti-histimine cream from Kathy. But the pain endured, and the thumb got red and swollen. Over the next hour of so, the swelling extended to the whole hand and the pain moved up my arm. All in all, a very painful experience to end the day.