31st August 2008 – Back on the ship, the first job was to give water to the plants and flowers!
Month: August 2008
29th August 2008 – For the last day I decided to make a trip on foot along the canal. I spoke to some people living on their barge. I found some very nice ships. It was a long walk, the temperature making it even harder.
26th August 2008 – Going to the Canal Du Midi area means making a trip. Very soon, I’ll write a whole section on the canal and the area, but here I briefly mention the trip.
23th August 2008 – Leaving on holiday so no updates for the next week….
21st August 2008 – In the evening we continued welding the windows on the other side. We still need to fit in the glass, but this will be done after holiday.
20th August 2008 – In the morning there was a meeting for the house boat society. In the afternoon, we made a little trip through Ghent by boat. It is nice to see ships from a different angle.
16th August 2008 – At 8 o’clock in the morning the welder and I started putting the windows in the den of the ship. It looks an easy job, but it really is a hard job.
Square windows are not as easy to place as portholes. You need to follow the line of the ship. A porthole has no corners and the middle of every pothole needs to e at the same distance from the gangway. With the bottom corners of square windows, this is different.
15th August 2008 – We mainly painted the ship today, finishing the back accommodation (details), painting the inside of the boeing at the front and the anchor winch. The paint from last year was nearly completely washed away by the rain. And yes, it was metal paint!
I started building the frame for the bath room. First, I went out of screws, then screw bits for the drilling machine and at the end of the day I had no more wood left.
At the end of the day we removed the six windows. Looked like an easy job, but it took us around 4 hours to remove six windows. They were glued and the bolts as well.
10th August 2008 – As expected, it was hard to get up and work, but at the end of the day, the bedroom and corridor were finished.
9th August 2008 – We were holding a local event. The idea was to learn to know the people from the houses and they to learn us. As I expected, everybody was sitting with its own neighbours. But it didn’t make the happening less enjoyable!
Friends from Ghent came over an this made it a very good evening! Less nice was the feeling I had to get up early the next day?
5th August 2008 – Often the water is the first place to loose your stuff. This time it was different, I found a nice wrijfhout with rope. Two weeks ago, a neighbour fond a nice flag mast in the water as well.
2nd/3th August 2008 – Saturday morning we painted the remaining parts of the back accommodation and a part of the side of the hull on the water side. The ship is starting to look nicer again.The roof is gray painted, like the primer. I started to like this colour and it keeps the inside of the back accommodation that little bit cooler then the dark green, previously painted.
The lower part of the crane was painted black for multiple reasons. A whole white crane didn’t look at all. Furthermore, it often needs oil on the turning points, so the white would become a kind of brown, but not nice at all.
In the afternoon I went to Ghent. I visited some friends, before going to a party. I don’t know why, but a party on a ship is always just that little nicer then one on land.
The next day I visited some more friends in Ghent before returning back to my ship. That night I couldn’t sleep since my little skylight in the back accommodation is leaking and the dripping in a bucket was noisy.
