Week 11 Working on The Boat

Week 11

Johanna and Jacoba

The sternthruster arrived on Monday...

and was installed and operational by Saturday morning...

...thanks to our boat expert.

He also did some welding on Johanna and will be installing a heating system and boiler in her shortly. He seems to have an answer for just about everything and certainly knows his stuff!

The plan was also to do some painting repairs on Jacoba and a full paint job on Johanna.

Needless to say, the work seemed to expand to fill the time available - 3 weeks

I had to pull the aft beds out in order to get to a problem spot (a hole!!!) near the welding required for the sternthruster 

(aka "hekschroef").

 A few years ago, the aft porthole had been leaking and water had settled behind one of the ribs - I didn't know about it for quite a while so this resulted in a hole about the size of a pea. It is now welded closed and the rest of the metal seems sound, but I will have to keep an eye on it!

I treated the whole area with rustkiller and painted the underbed surface - with the thought that it might make it easier to see if there are any further problems. The piece of steel that was cut out for the hekschroef is remarkably thick, so I am hopeful if not confident...bearing in mind that the hull is well over 100 years old!

The patch right in the middle of the photo is a lump of concrete - poured onto the bottom as ballast, (presumably). 

I have removed some of it, due to the extra weight of the hekschroef.

Making the bedbase

I had to cut through some of the old lats, as they had been fastened behind the wall linings. I'm making a new structure with lift out panels for the batteries, rudder pulley wheel, and new electric switches and relays.

This involves a lot of going up and down the ladder!, but it is so handy to have all my tools in the workshed, rather than doing the job whilst the boat is in the water.

Coronavirus

It wouldn't be right to skip this increasingly important event.

Janny has closed the care farm - rather alarming given that we still have to pay our bills...

I managed to negotiate for two of our clients to keep "working" in sheltered conditions - one in the boat shed with me - and the other in the workshed at the farm. 

The Dutch Government on Sunday announced closure of many things, including schools, restaurants and "coffee" shops (marijuana houses). Not a mention of helping people to pay their day to day expenses if they are not working...

(yes, it worries me). For example; the parents of one of our kids both work in a bakery - and with the kids home from school, somebody has to look after them. Categories such as nursing and firefighters were specifically mentioned as receiving assistance for this problem, but there will obviously be many other similar circumstances.

Of even greater concern to me was that Paul and Heather were in Spain, with everything closing around them - they cut their (otherwise fantastic) holiday short and did a full days drive to Barcelona to catch a plane home (still in the air as I write).

Ben is also out of work - the Modelling Agencies also seem to have put everything on hold.

Random boat photos