11th July 2016 – Two more paint sessions on the Watergeus. I divided the den in several sections, makes the job more attractive to myself. I painted a section in the morning and one in the afternoon.
One of the decorative propellers on the front deck was still in bare metal. I put a coat on, so it doesn’t look rusty anymore. She doesn’t look great in a gray colour, but the metal is protected. As long as people don’t see rust, it is fine…
10th July 2016 – I ran out of screws today. I noticed that ever sheet is connected to the frame by 38 screws. That’s why I managed to use 500 screws in two days time.
9th July 2016 – I finished the frame for the bathroom and even mounted the door. I don’t have enough plywood to finish the walls, but you can now clearly see the size of the bathroom. I used sheets of volkern (trespa) for the floor. Solid and waterproof, but extremely hard to drill a screw through.
8th July 2016 – The wall for the bathroom is done. A frame, insulation and plywood. I started with the side wall, but it was getting late, so, this is a job for tomorrow. I had plenty of old rubbish hanging around, so the last hours of daylight were spent on cutting up the rubbish and putting it in bags.
8th July 2016 – As a try-out, I painted one section of the den of the Watergeus in a gray hamerite based paint.
6th July 2016 – Again a small amount of time spent aboard making the frame. I finished the wooden construction around the second window.
5th July 2016 – I only had some time free this evening, enough to do some small work on the framing around the windows. Since it was becoming late at night, I decided not to cut to much wood and wake up the neighbours.
3rd July 2016 – I spent most of the day at work. In the evening I managed to give the engine room a first coat of white paint. Looks much larger now.
While I couldn’t sleep I put four more sheets of plywood to the ceiling and some insulation. Halve of the ceiling is now done.
2nd July 2016 – The freshly welded parts were painted, also the parts where the primer was damaged. I cleaned the engine room, as far as possible, and painted the new metal on the inside. The problem with this engine room is the heat. It is so hot inside, you can only stay there for 15 minutes before having to take a break.
I emptied the bilges and hovered the dust away. It was a clean engine room in January and since the removal of the old wheelhouse in March, it became a mess. Rain, leaves, metal, etc… all entered the engine room. A next step will be to clean and check the engine.
26th June 2016 – Insulating the ship and mounting power cables. Before you realize it, the day has gone and you barely see any changes.
26th June 2016 – It is very busy at the moment. Whenever I have some time, I’m filling up the gap between December 2015 and now. If some links are broken, just let me know. I’m cleaning up the site.
25th June 2016 – Last year, I salvaged a wheelhouse from a spits barge. It is a small wooden cabin that can fit on the ‘Op Hoop van Zegen’. It was stored in the Watergeus on several locations. It took me all morning to get the pieces. My father came to help. It is now temporary mounted on the roof of the front cabin.
24th June 2016 – I bought insulation. It is one of the most annoying jobs on a ship.
19th June 2016 – Today we went to Ghent. A friend of mine asked for some advice on salvaging a sunken spits barge. When we arrived, I realized there was little to no hope to get this thing afloat without taking risks of spending a lot of money.
In the afternoon, we made a walk in Ghent and, as usual, I took some pictures.
18th June 2016 – Time to continue on the engine room project. Today we welded the roof and the frame for the big skylight.
