God Morgen
I guess since I have been back in Ulvik for three weeks now I should fire up the blog again. Everything has settled down nicely and the resort is ticking over well, Izzy has just turned 30 so we decided to throw a party on Saturday and invite her closest friends from Ulvik to come along. You could say it was my first proper Norwegian / Swedish party experience, one I won't forget in a hurry. What with Reidun and Ingrid serving Moet from their ample cleavages,
To George & Therese singing the National Anthem standing on one leg!
Young Trine and Max introducing us to some bizarre Swedish pop music and Vaiva's 'Interesting' birthday cake.... In true Norwegian style they bolted down the Vodka / Champagne / Cider & beer then shot off to the pub for a pint and 8 straws. Unfortunately for me it was a school night so I stayed back, cleaned up and crashed out.
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Isabella (the boat) is now perfect, some adjustments to the positioning of the fuel tank giving her a better weight distribution and able to 'plane' much more easily and some more tweaking to the engine, she now runs like a dream and I often 'go to work' in her. It takes me 20 minutes to walk to the hotel, 5 minutes to drive (from leaving the house to entering the hotel) and only 3 minutes by boat. My next door neighbor, Frode, has kindly let me moor her right outside my apartment on his moorings and both of my hotels have landing platforms to tie up to. Perfect.
So confident I was with her performance, I decided to take her for a long spin although I did bottle out at the T Junction to Osa & Bergen, I had enough fuel and she was running well, I just felt that if something did pack up, it would be a bloody long 'paddle' back as I was already 5 miles out! I think I'll stick to using her for 'work' use for now.
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Sunday 27th May and I get a bizarre phone call from the Brakanes, It turns out one of their clients was arriving by boat and had run out of fuel a couple of miles from the hotel and was drifting aimlessly down the Hardanger Fjord. Would I mind going to help them? Jumping at the chance to save another mariner I fired up all 12.5 horses under Isabella's bonnet and proceeded to cruise up the Fjord in search of the stricken vessel. I must admit, when I saw her I was a little concerned, she was a massive day boat with a 90HP engine and a family of 6 on board who had traveled from Bergen to Ulvik in this thing, only to run out of fuel 2 miles from port. As i approached they threw me their bow line and I hitched her up to my grab handles. It was a struggle for my tiny craft but within the hour I had successfully towed her into the harbor. Good deed done for the day but I was a little miffed by the fact they didn't even say thank you! - Googling 'salvage rights' technically their boat is now mine as they threw me the line..... I'll keep my eyes open if I ever see them again!
Oh well, in the words of our famous local poet, Olav H Hague, "Do another man a favor" It can't hurt
Isabella doing what she does best....
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