27th December 2005 – Andy, a friend of mine, was looking to buy a new boat for conversion into a house boat. Since, I knew the area and spoke the language, I looked for several places, most of them were scrapyards. A few exceptions were places were a lot of boats were being converted privately.
We first stopped in Ghent at the scrapyard. They only had one barge, the Avrachain. It was already completely stripped and used as a fuel barge. Disappointed, we drove to Sluiskil. There was a small fishing boat, the Z. 501 Tac Horne. People told me it was the property of the yard, so I went to the yard and asked if we could visit the boat. The told us that they also owned an old Luxe Motor at the other side of the dock, the Watergeus.
We had a look at both ships. The Luxe motor looked nice, so we went back and offered them a price. They wanted more, so we asked their price and agreed straight away. We made up the paperwork, which took us three hours.
After the paperwork, we got the keys for a first visit of the inside. Here are some pictures taken on 27th December 2005:
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