27th November 2017 – Again a small puddle of water in the wheelhouse. One of the windows is leaking. Same story, different ship!
26th November 2017 – I drilled a few wholes so I can put through the wires for the bilge pumps and other equipment down in the engine room.
14th November 2017 – Two big machines: the Solar Panel controller and the inverter are now hanging in the engine room. It took much more time then expected to bolt them in the bulkhead. I had to ran several times between the two compartments, running up and down the stairs to tighten the bolts.
13th November 2017 – I mounted the first cable gutter in the engine room. The cables need to run tightly and clean, not like it used to be, around everything and everywhere. I don’t want to think yet how many cables that will be running through the engine room, but with all the equipment, there will be a lot!
Two power cables are running from the battery. One of them is spare or in case I need another set of batteries.
7th November 2017 – I just taped a bit of my roof with aluminum tape. It will hold for now and at least it should stop the water from coming in and the wood can now start to dry out.
6th November 2017 – It was still leaking. I think water is coming from somewhere else….
5th November 2017 – Soon after getting up, I checked the wheelhouse. Dry on the side, but a new leak one meter further. With the remaining silicon, I managed to do something.
29th October 2017 – The dashboard in the wheelhouse was no good anymore. I quickly built a new one in plywood. Finishing it will be for later. It is now important that it holds the meters and that the cables become connected to it.
I have two switch panels and a battery meter. There is a bilge alarm and that is it. The idea is to keep it simple.
28th October 2017 – The front desk for the Library needed some finishing and a good coat of paint.
While I was aboard, I did some smaller jobs like putting a wooden beam underneath the cover of the lifeboat. So the rainwater will no longer be collected in the cover.
24th October 2017 – Sometimes you need to run the engines to keep everything in a good order. Last time, when we moved Tordino, the batteries of the bow thruster were dead. So I made a plan of charging them every month.
23rd October 2017 – We had to move the Arma. She was moored where a dredging company had to work. The company had a strong pusher and together with the bowtruster of the Arma, we managed to get to the other side. Halfway the manoeuvre, the bow DAF engine died and we had to rely on the pusher.
18th October 2017 – When I moved onto my ship several years ago, the meetbrief was still having the old address where I lived before. To get a permission to have radio equipment aboard, I had to change this document. There are two options:
- driving to Schoten (Antwerp) or
- changing it in Ostend.
It is one of these administrative hassles you just need to do, but it nearly takes you half a day to do so.
15th October 2017 – I did some sanding and painting of the roof top of the kitchen. Some of the paint got damaged when the radar was taken off and later mounted back…
14th October 2017 – I finally found some time again to work on the Watergeus. A small job, with a good result. I mounted two fire extinguishers, on in the income and one in the kitchen.
13th October 2017 – The Library room needs a desk where people can ask for information or request books and documents from our archive. It needs to divide the storage of books and the area where people can read books.
I spent some time building the desk. It isn’t finished, but you get the idea.