Blue Dove is slowly getting ready for her summer travels. De-winterisation is taking so much time, not in the least because it is so cold. The nights are still very cold, around zero, with an icy easterly. By the time the boat has warmed up in the morning it is already more or less time for lunch. And time to climb out of sleeping bag and start doing things. At least the sails are up. And anything I might need for the boat has to be ordered in SPB. And more often than not SPB has to order from abroad.
I suffer from a very female problem, I cannot work on the boat before it is clean. And the boat was filthy when I arrived, covered in dust and soot from the factory on the other side of the river. I am told that the factory was built by Germans before WWII when this area belonged to Finland. And Priozyorsk was known as Käkisalmi.
The silliest problem I have is lack of water. And this whilst being in the biggest fresh water lake of Europe, Lake Ladoga. The yard has no water. No water hoses on the jetty or anywhere else. There is a well in the yard but the water is contaminated. Andrey, the yard manager has promised to sort this out for me. But perhaps best is to find a hand pump and source water straight from the lake into the water tanks. We did this in Tainui in 2013 in lake Onega. It was fine.
Now off to Saint-Petersburg and Moscow for a few days of R&R with friends.
