19th July 2019 – We started cleaning the anchor winch of the Arma by removing the old paint. The winch started leaking and there was no other option but to empty the oil tank. Most of the tank was filled with water, but at the end, I hoovered out around 120 litres of dirty substance.
It was primered in the afternoon.
15th July 2019 – My mother painted the bedroom, everything got a second coat now. It is looking good. Another item finished on the Watergeus.
13rd July 2019 – We had our annual Kolenkaai Feesten. It was a good edition, better then last year!
12th July 2019 – I got the anchor winch back from the Hornblower. I bought it in 2011, but it never really got in use. Now it is time to restore it to her original condition and put her in the museum.
12th July 2019 – My neighbour is back from the yard. That means that everybody is back for the Kolenkaaifeesten tomorrow.
7th July 2019 – While I was open to the public, I ran the engine for over one hour, including the steering system. It had been a while and no issues came up!
6th July 2019 – I’ve just grinded starboard side of the den. We cleaned the ship and started painting. Sadly enough it started raining at night.
5th July 2019 – A few jobs were done today. I removed rust from the gangway and my mother painted the freshly finished bedroom.
4th July 2019 – After more than seven months, I managed to finish the bedroom. Quite an achievement since it is probably the smallest room aboard….
29th June 2019 – For some time, I have been looking for a yacht. I’m not difficult in what I want. It must look old fashioned, made in metal and it needs an interior that is useful. The budget is very limited. I have two ships in mind.
One is a motorschouw with a broken engine, but a finished interior. The other one is supposed to have a running engine, but no interior.
Today I went to see both of them. The first one was in Raamdonksveer. On arrivial, I noticed it was a riveted ship, but with some rotten parts on deck. Underneath the bollards was fibreglass, and some silicone in the deck to avoid water coming through. The engine is indeed broken, but the ship seems fine. The cap on the back deck needs replacing. It was a warm and dry day, so was the ship. I couldn’t find any other issues of leaks. But there will be something else wrong for that price…
The second ship was much bigger, it was a Ten Broeke kruiser with a massive Mercedes Engine. I was not convinced how the engine ran, never mind the rest of the ship. Metal work was good, but most of the windows needed replacing. The interior was rotten and the smell unacceptable.
Once back at home, I knew which one I wanted, but not at their asking price….
23rd June 2019 – While we were sailing through some parts of Ghent, I managed to take over 200 pictures. I hadn’t been in Ghent for some time and by the water is the best way to take pictures…
22nd June 2019 – We brought back the Hornblower to Bruges. It was a long and very noisy journey. Thankfully, the weather and crew were fine and the food delicious! At an average speed of 6km we made it from 08u30 in the morning til 18u20 from Ghent to Bruges without any issues.
14th June 2019 – I joined a friend to Amsterdam. He is interested in buying a ship and wanted some advice. We were early and I decided to walk around in the marine, looking for old tugs and barges. I found a few…
12th June 2019 – Leaking windows is an issue on all boats. I replaced some old windows in 2007 on the Watergeus with new ones. They never leaked until last week. The reason: the silicone had started to disintegrate. I replaced the silicone on three windows and today, after some heavy rain they were dry. Operation succeeded.
The only windows I found so far that have never let me down were Rafa windows, if mounted in a metal frame. I’m not a shareholder of this company, since I always buy them second hand… This was also the advice I gave somebody a week ago when he wanted to buy a small yacht: go for aluminum windows instead of the glass in rubber!
10th June 2019 – I have been sitting inside the whole day because of the bad weather. Rain…. Let just hope that the whole summer won’t be like this. I really like to continue painting my two ships.
In between two showers I fixed three leaking windows on the Watergeus. Silicone doesn’t last forever…
Later in the evening, I went to the English neighbour and had a few beers, talking about boat conversions and why you should start doing such a project. Another neighbour joined a bit later.