We stayed on Rusty while my parents were visiting. It was fun at first - lots of beautiful flowers on the canal banks, and baby ducklings.







But then the loo blocked up, and I got an effluent shower during the unblocking attempts. We did eventually free it, but then it blocked again almost immediately. And again. And again.

Another long weekend, with a public holiday on the Monday, and Leuven Yacht Club is having an open day. Well, more like an open weekend, with tours round the town for visiting yacht crews, and up to two weeks free moorings.

Took our Dutch live-aboard visitors to the get-together on Saturday evening, to do our socialising for us. The yacht club members were quite relieved - their English is pretty good, but they're not used to conversing in it, so it makes them nervous. I feel just the same trying to use Netherlands.

21st May is a public holiday in Belgium, and the 22nd a company holiday, so a good long weekend. We missed out on all these last year with the overseas trips.





We spent a good chunk of the weekend on Rusty, including a couple of nights aboard. So we finally made a bit of headway on the jobs, mostly the bedroom ceiling. Made the panel and battens for the really awkward corner.

Also tried out the local restaurants - Hungaria excellent, Mexican disappointing (but then we have high standards for Mexican food).

Most significantly we spent a couple of nights aboard, for the first time in over six months.

A day visit from Pat and Luke.



Luke elected to help Nick fix Rusty's engine, while Pat and I toured the sights. So everyone was happy.

It took two goes to fix the cooling water system, involving a lot of smoke and water, but it's running now - as long as we ignore the strange noise.

We found our leak - the rubber thingy that connects the raw water from the gear box oil cooler to the main engine heat exchanger.



Now we just have to get a new one.

The Belgian agent for Bowman want €34.

From ASAP it's £16 including delivery.

Not a difficult decision.