Thurs 7 Oct - sore arm, Prefecture, fix bimini, book lock, cancel flight, hand pain

When I woke, the pain from the wasp sting had spread up to my left bicep, and the swelling in my hand was so bad that I could hardly close my fingers to form a fist. But no rest for the wicked today; we had work to do. Firstly, we headed up to the Prefecture on our bikes to make sure we arrived before 0800h. When we got there, there was a queue in the street of about 20 people waiting to be called for their Visa appointments. We waited until the chosen ones had been allowed into the Prefecture by the guards, and then we talked to one of the guards and explained why we were there to collect our passports. He checked inside with some staff, and then welcomed us inside the gates and directed us where to go (in the friendliest of manners). Within 5 minutes we were talking with the prefecture officer who had reviewed our application since it was found yesterday. She guided us through our application and explained what was still needed to complete the application. She then gave us our passports and also gave us back our application to amend and resubmit. This was much more than we had expected to receive (and so much better than how we had been treated in Montauban in 2016). On our way out the gates, the guards bid us farewell in faltering English with big smiles on their faces (we suspected they don't see many applications from Australians at that Prefecture).

We hopped on our bikes with smiles on our faces, and headed back to the boat. But along the way we spotted a delightful little patisserie/tearoom, and decided to treat ourselves to a nice breakfast of croissants and coffee. Rita struck up a conversation with the proprietoress, and we heard a story of the dangers of success. After three generations had run the tearoom for nearly 100 years, they had become so successful in recent years that this lady could afford to send her children to University. But now, with degrees in hand, the children did not want to spend the rest of their lives running a tearoom. So the lady was being forced to close the tearoom at the end of the year when she retired. After looking at the range of cakes on offer (including some delighful "pig-cakes"), we bought something for an afternoon treat and headed on.

That afternoon, while Rita was away for a swim, Phil and I got stuck into fixing the bimini. Instead of screwing the bimini onto the wheelhouse roof, we drilled completely through the roof where the screwholes had been, then made up aluminium plates to go under the roof in the wheelhouse, and put a long bolt through the bimini fixing, the roof and the plate, and tightened the bimini to the roof with a nut underneath the plate (with rubber o-rings sealing the joints from the weather). This should hold the bimini in place in the strongest winds, but the fixing plates on the bimini were attached to the bimini frame with cable ties, which should break if the bimini should suddenly strike something solid (like a bridge).

Later that afternoon, we contacted the eclusiers to book our passage through the Dijon lock first thing in the morning for our trip back to St Jean de Losne. After our meeting with the Prefecture this morning, we were confident that we could get the Carte des Sejour for me for an extended stay, so I took the brave step and cancelled my Singapore Airlines flight on October 14. We then checked with Phil about how to pair our iPhones with the flat-screen Smart TV and were confident that we could make one work for us if we bought one. After all the manual work on the bimini fixings this afternoon, my hand was even more swollen and painful, but I felt pleased with a productive days work.