in the channel to Donau

Tuesday, 7th of July.

We take down the mast in the little Ana Marina south of Constanta and decide to head for the channel to the Donau.

While Olga and Micael go shop for food Ellide Embla arrives at the locks where a Russian-speaking captain of a Rumanians barge offers us a lift. If we hang on to them are we allowed to continue go until 10:00PM, otherwise we must stay just after the locks until the next morning.

in the locks, we go in front of Argos (the barge is 107m long and has ca 90m long barge´pushing in front of itself).

We hang on to the barge. They have a crew of five. Vladimir, the captain comes from a Russian village in Rumania. They are religious people who moved out of Russia in the 18th century. Vladimir has a dream of coming to Russia one day.

Coming out of the locks we start cooking to discover that the lamp oil Magnus hunted around the whole Constanta is a wrong chemical and our cooker is not functioning as it should. We decide to grill.

Micael is grilling under the mast.

Next morning we start early and around 10:00 AM we have gone through the channel. We separate from the barge, and it seems that both sides look at the voyage together as an economically good affair.

Ellide Embla hanging on with Argos, same 5-6 knots.

Arrive in Marina Dineva

Now we have arrived in Marina Dineva in Bulgaria. We arrived late yesterday, luckily some Estonian charter travellers went also to Sunny Beach, so we could share their transfer bus. We have cleaned a little on board and test started the engine. Olga has tried the grinder to grind of some mold (lite, lite mögel). And I had to weld the bathing ladder together as it had a small damage from the winter (then of course it was time for a swim!) Otherwise everything seems to be intact. Tomorrow we hope to head for Constanza.

32 in the air and 24 in the water, very nice!