Moonrise has arrived!

Phew. Nice thing about living in Taiwan: you can get things delivered on Saturdays. The boat was kept in storage at the customs warehouse while I was out of town. Last night I got home and this morning they delivered the boat. There was a last minute problem in that the delivery service didn’t want to meet us in the park where boats are kept after park officials said that no private boats could be stored (we had permission from the local rowing coach to store our boats in with his). But after they met us outside the park the truck driver (and a second driver in a smaller truck, don’t ask me why) took us right to the bridge under which boats are stored and cheerfully helped unpack everything. Lots of sign language was involved, since they spoke no English and the only Chinese words I knew that helped were ‘here’, ‘there’ and ‘good’. Fortunately they were willing to keep the large wooden crate. Actually I think they were happy to have it – it has a nice metal frame inside and we’d have loved to keep it for boat storage if we had anywhere to put it.

The boat has one dent on the decking, but we’re actually not even sure if it was there when we unpacked it or came later, so no complaints about that. Between the boat crate and the box you sent from the US, all parts seem to be here except the bolts to attach the long bars of the boat rack to each other and to the car. No big deal, there are hardware stores here and hopefully they carry bolts that long.

It was very hot and humid, but of course I had to take a small lap in the boat. (After christening it, naturally. We didn’t have champagne so I used river water, as our rowing club in the Netherlands does.) For some reason there was no dock at all there today, but with such a
stable boat there wasn’t too much trouble doing a wet launch despite some very slippery conditions. Fortunately when I fell down I managed not to fall on the boat. Of course I haven’t fine tuned the rigging, but it felt good; somehow it manages to feel sort of big and wallow-y
without feeling at all heavy or slow.

The boat looks great. The blue of the cockpit is very nice: dark enough to suggest the night sky without being dark enough to get unbearably hot. the printing is perfect. Installing the riggers wasn’t hard at all. Also, the boat cover has a very good design, and was easy to use. I’m so glad all that customs stuff is done! Now all I have to do is install the strokecoach wiring and compass, then brave rowing in the heat enough to get ready for a race here at the end of August. That’s actually a bit worrying since I’ve committed to swimming across Sun-Moon Lake (3km, but you use floats or a kickboard) the next day.