It has been a scorcher of a week with every day over 33c. The inside of the boat has been even hotter rising to 43c one day while we were out and seldom dropping below 25c at night.
We left Worms on the Monday and headed down the Rhine with a goodly current behind us. There were lots of boats such as this container boat that was carrying over 350 containers.
The boats have a hydraulic wheelhouse that can be extended to peer over the containers. The Rhine was getting more interesting now as we swept along past hillsides of vineyards and names like Nierstein and Oppenheim.
We stopped for the night in a lovely little lake accessed from the Rhine through an almost hidden channel. We anchored for the first time this year.
Then next day we turned off the Rhine and into the River Main, which is to be our home for the next 6 weeks. As we were going along I noticed the temperature gauge roaring up and fearing the worst we stopped and looked inside the engine compartment. All seemed well so we continued gingerly ahead and the temperature started to go down. We breathed a sigh of relief and as subsequent events showed it was down to the quality of oil used in the last oil change.
We cruised through industrial surroundings up river to Frankfurt and pulled into a new harbour there called Westhaven.
The weather was still stifling hot. Next day whilst Wendy painted the top deck with non slip paint to make the deck as new again, I changed the oil and the oil filter. What a difference both things have made. The deck is looking great and we realised that the boatyard that had caused us all the grief with shoddy workmanship earlier in the cruise had also put poor quality oil into the boat. After the oil change we had no smoke, no oily exhaust and the temperature of the engine was markedly less. We had been plagued with smoky and oily exhaust ever since we picked up the boat in May.
The next day we headed by train to Frankfurt Airport to meet Sam who had flown in from Tokyo after spending a few days there on the way to join us for two weeks cruising up the Main. There will be a special edition of this blog in the next day or two with reports of Sam’s experiences in Japan.
Then it was time to leave Frankfurt and head up the River. We stopped the first night at a small marina in a shallow basin just off the river. It cost a fortune, the owner was arrogant and refused to let us stay unless we left our boat registration papers with him over night. As there was nowhere else nearby to stay we had no choice. What a contrast with the next night at Aschaffenberg which is actually in Bavaria, where we stayed in the Nautilus Motor Boat club and the people there were so friendly even taking us to a nearby Hypermarket in one of their cars to enable us to get supplies. Sam had a swim in the river there whilst we could see the annual dragon boat festival just down river from us.
We had a few cold beers with them on the club terrace whilst Sam got introduced to WeissBier which he loved.
Aschaffenberg is dominated by its Schloss which was almost completely demolished in WWII and has been restored to its original state over the last 40 years.
There are lovely gardens surrounding the Schloss and we enjoined the Pompeyanum a reconstruction of a villa from Pompeii built in the grounds.
Then today we have cruised up the river for 37km passing thousands of german families and kids having fun in their boats, river beaches and festivals. It was soo hot everyone was out at the pools,water slides, in the river or just sun bathing. We stopped tonight in Miltenberg which is a quintessential German Mediaeval Town full of timbered houses and centuries old traditions. It was the annual Town Festival and there were brass bands everywhere, food stalls, beer stalls and thousands of people.
We are staying tomorrow in Miltenberg before continuing up the River .
