10th July 2008 – This evening there was the concert of Leonard Cohen in Bruges. This is a serious reason not work!
10th July 2008 – This evening there was the concert of Leonard Cohen in Bruges. This is a serious reason not work!
9th July 2008 – Again a meeting, being a member of the board of the Vlaamse Woonschepen is a lot of work. I must say I love the job and like to work for people who live on ships like me. This meeting is to talk about a small party we would like to give.
8th July 2008 – Today we moved some furnish from my parents place to my ship. Since a room is finished, I can store my stuff in that room. The more comes over the more space I have at my parents place to store more stuff. Also when building the next room, I can use the furniture to estimate the size of the room.
7th July 2008 – This evening I cleaned the room that was built last weekend. I put a plastic table, two chairs and a Dutch flag as decoration. So it does feel as a room.
I did notice the room was slightly built to big, since I could not reach by hand the end of the table and the wall. when building I believed it was built to small. So you only notice it when finished.
6th July 2008 – Again a rommelmarkt, this time in Ostend. This time I found a few nice pieces of decoration. Mainly metal decoration such as a copper coffee can, a green coloured metal plate, a nice biscuit box of Harrods, etc…
In the evening I had visit of two friends living on a spits barge in Ghent. They are still in an early stage of converting, but do have a lovely roef to live in. When boat owners are talking about converting a ship, you notice time is to short to tell everything! It was a great evening.
5th July 2008 – The first room is nearly finished. I couldn’t realize it would take a whole day to finish the sides and build a wall with door entrance and door!
Since I’m using second hand doors from an old house we had to figure out which door would be suitable for the office space. All doors look identical, but there is a double door for the living room, and all the other doors have different sizes.
Building the wall was not that hard. We had done it before. The most difficult part was to get the door in position. We had to make the corridor wider for the door to fit. So the bedroom will become smaller and the bed I have might no longer fit.
It took us again some time to get the curve right of the ceiling. But in the end, it was a good day and actually wen can not only see the result, but also start making use of it!
3th July 2008 – The idea of yesterday is still in my head. To realize the plan I started cleaning out the engine room, building shelves and making some more room. I painted the exhaust pipe, removed and old compressor and cleaned the work table. I was surprised to find so many pieces I had never used, mainly from Lister engines. I hope one day to have a Lister again!
By the end of the evening, I was covered in oil and paint, but the result was fine.
2nd July 2008 – I ran my generator, after more then a year. She ran beautifully, but still I will one day put her on rubber pieces to have less noise and vibrations. She is welded to the ribs of the ship and you’ll hear and feel it very good.
It was a hot day, so I could not sleep. I therefore decided to photograph the engine room and make a plan where to put the new batteries, charger and cables. It took me a few hours, but my idea is looking good.
30th June 2008 – In the evening, my neighbour mentioned my gangway was moving all the time. I went to have a look and mounted a few bolts into the gangway preventing it from collapsing.
We then tried to start her engine but it seemed all batteries were dead, exactly the same problem as on my ship. She has an old loader who continuously loads the batteries They dry out and are slowly dying. Sadly enough, we could not start the engine.
29th June 2008 – Having a short night, and a little headache, I started working at 9 o’clock. Besides ding some more insulation (halve of the hold is done now), I made a floor for the corridor and the entrance. I used the remaining azobe wood. What was still left and seemed useless, I gave away a few ships further. A heavy job, but by the end of the evening, the hold looked pretty clean and it was more easy to get an idea of the size of the rooms.
After building the floor in the office space last time, I had some azobe wooden planks left, not much but enough for the corridor and the entrance. Only I had several different sizes of them. By the time I moved all of them several times, I found enough for the corridor. The entrance was built with what was left.
Since I didn’t like throwing away all the wood, I decided to keep some for making stairs, etc…
28th June 2008 – This evening, a neighbour gave a big party for his wife’s birthday and the fact they moved to a smaller ship. We had a great time, I met many new people, some with a background of house boats, some not…
27th June 2008 – In the late evening I visited two houseboats in Ghent, a converted tjalk and a spits barge under conversion.
The tjalk was rebuilt from the deck up and looked in some ways more like a yacht then a tjalk. Even so, I really liked the size and the style it was converted. It looked modern on the inside and with the few to some newer office buildings outside, it was the right ship for the right mooring. I have seen some nice ideas I’m certainly will try to implement in my own ship. So once again, I believe in the idea of learning how to convert a ship by looking at them!
The spits barge had to be converted. An IBA was placed on the barge. It was a massive installation standing in the hold, even looking bigger because of the height of the hold. It was a nice ship with a lovely old back accommodation, suitable to live on during and even after the conversion of the hold.
23th June 2008 – In February 2007 I filled my waste water tank with canal water, so I could use it as a ballast tank. Since I have intentions to redo the waterline, I emptied the tank last month. Only some water remained in and my ship listed slightly to port side. I created a second hole in the tank and bought a hatch to fit in. So I could also pump out the remaining water. The tank is now nearly dry. The ship raised a few centimetres.
22nd June 2008 – Today I visited two second hand markets (called rommelmarkt in Dutch). I found a few pieces for the interior. Not exactly something I will need in the first couple of months, still the price was right.
In the afternoon I taped all the little holes in the anti-damp foil.
21st June 2008 – Today we worked on insulating the sleeping room, corridor and some part of the living room.