Month: July 2007

30th July 2007 – Since I need to know every pipe and exhaust that comes out of the roof before the works start, I’m designing the final stage of the cargo hold. I had finished putting the rooms and dimensions in September 2006. I ameliorated it for the windows in January 2007 and am finishing it now for the roof.

In the meantime, I continue to look at several barges for sale to have a look at what interior I like and what I don’t like.

I decided to keep the bathroom and kitchen next to each other, so all water is at one place. This makes it easier in building and maintaining the water system. It is also cheaper, water needs to run less far and in case of a leak, you don’t need to break open the whole boat to find the problem.

The red dots on the last drawing are air vents, one for the kitchen, one for the heating and one for general air vent. The gray colour indicates where the metal roof will come and will be recovered by hatches. The black pieces are the two cabins.

29th July 2007 – Replaced the ropes in the mast. While lowering the mast, I decided to put a new coat on paint on it. The flag of Amsterdam is hanging in the small mast on the bow of the ship. Further, I worked a bit more on the anchor winch.

The mast is in not such a good condition as I thought it was. besides the hole in the side, the top was very rusty. I’ll put another mast in mt list of equipment to buy in the next couple of years.

Meanwhile my mother painted the two tables in the wheelhouse. It is starting to look much better now. I can’t wait to see my roof over the cargo hold.

22nd July 2007 – Already since I had the boat, I wanted to have a small table in the wheelhouse. In the meantime I had all the stuff, some wood from a scrapped barge, a table from an old trawler and wood from the cargo hold. Today I finally decided to make it all look right. While looking for some more wood, I found enough pieces to make a nice %plint% around the wheelhouse. So everything starts to look good, without costing me any money!

Nearly every boat has a small mast on the bow, mine hasn’t and never had one. Yesterday in Sluiskil, I got some rvs steel pipes. Since I could not drill in it, I burned a hole with the drilling machine. Yes this is possible but it costs you at least two metal drills. They just melt and create a hole through their heat. It is not the right way, but the bolts now nicely fit in it! So my boat has a mast as well now!

The new boat owner of two boats further came by. I believe we might have a small community of boat owners in the end! That would be great!!!

20th July 2007 – I spent some time today in further designing my roof and measuring. I have changed some more details, so I can keep all the hatches and still have a skylight!

12th July 2007 – It started as a sunny day, so I decided to threat the whole deck with oil to protect it from rust and to make loose the rust there is. By the noon clouds were coming, so I quit. Furthermore, most of the anchor winch is cleaned. Some pieces already move again!

11th July 2007 – A very rainy day, I cleaned a bit of the anchor winch and treated some rust with diesel on the deck

10th July 2007 – Yesterday I bought four air vents for engine rooms. Two of them are my engine room, the two other ones for the new kitchen in the cargo hold. One of them was already cleaned and could be placed straight away on the engine room pipe, wasn’t it from the fact the tube was 0.5cm to wide. Looked easy to solve, but with bashing on the pipe It didn’t go as fluently as I thought. In the end the pipe became smaller and the air vent fitted nicely on it. The whole neighbourhood was awake!

I moved my front anchor and welded it to the side of the boat. It takes less space, looks nicer and now it can be used as a decoration piece.

8th July 2007 – Since I’m considering putting back the hatches, I’m trying to find out a solution. With only one spare hatch and a strip of metal I started simulating my future roof. I took around 30 pictures and I am now trying to figure out how it would be best. I believe some people must have thought I’m crazy taking pictures of a single hatch.

Rinus came in the afternoon to have a drink. He gave me some tips on how to ameliorate my boat. It is nice to have ideas and suggestions from experienced people. I don’t know many people like him having the knowledge and sharing it for free!

6th July 2007 – My first day of a week aboard the Watergeus. I loaded a old computer and a few hardware components on board, such as a writer, printer, etc… Since these components take less space, the back accommodation looks bigger again.

In the late afternoon, the yard came again for making the final price on the roof. I still hadn’t made up my mind whether to put the hatches back or to create big platform.