Where Is Our Anchor Chain Stowed?

Based on one of our last posts, we got a request to post some pictures of where and how our anchor chain is stowed. Just in front (in the bow) we have a larger space, maybe 6 feet in length and height. One part is dedicated for storage (we use it for fenders and the like) and further on to the bow we have a larger plastic barrel, which carries our anchor chain. This barrel has a little hole that goes outside to drain the water that comes in when getting the anchor up. Pretty neat as no chain touches the steel hull and the whole system is basically separated from the hull. 

The barrel and the chain on top feeding into the barrel. 

The barrel inside. That is 300 ft of chain in there. We still need to do some cleaning there :-).

View of the barrel from behind the wooden paneling. You can also see the insulation of our boat, which goes from stern to bow and from deck to keel. 

Living On A Boatyard

As most of you figured, we are living on the hard right now. Apart from climbing on the boat, what feels like a thousand times a day, we are pretty happy on "our" yard (because we are the only ones living on the boat here).

Most interesting though are the bunch of folks also working on their boats here during the day, but not every day. We can't remember their names, so we gave them aliases. We won't show you pictures of them, but their boats respectively. 

1. The Sander:

Around the corner of our boat sits a small "Westsail-like" 30 footer in steel. When we got here, she was absolutely done. Rusty and holes throughout the bottom, a totally neglected boat, but an ambitious new owner. For four weeks now he is welding, sanding, epoxying. Day in and day out. We call him "The Sander", because he is sanding most of the days. He is in his 30ies and lost quite some weight the last weeks. He has a son, who is joining him on sunny days and while The Sander is sanding, the kid is sunbathing on the boat. When we walk by him he is always up for a chat... but only for a couple of minutes before he hides underneath is mask again.

all those epoxy spots used to be holes in the hull. 

2. The Blue Man:

Then we have the "lift outs". These are people with their boats coming on the hard for 3 or 4 days to quickly do their bottoms and go back in again. They are always in a rush. Last time we had a HR Rasmus in front of us, owned by a Belgium family. Quite the pros (not really). He sanded the whole bottom by hand and without protection. After an hour or so he was covered in blue Antifouling dust. We called him "The Blue Man" (as from the Blue Man Group).

The bottom was blue before (hence blue man) and is now red. 

3. Cpt Jack Sparrow

Cpt Jack Sparrow (alias J. Depp) is the third one showing up here on the drydock. We called him that way, because he is walking and behaving like the Jack Sparrow role in Pirates of the C. Especially his arms. He always seems to be over-excited in a lazy way. :-). He is working on a 50 something foot schooner and is just about 30 years old, running is own boat business and the perfect yard-bum (in a positive way). As soon as as the sun comes out, he undresses down to his shorts and enjoys the sun, while Stefanie is still wearing a her foul weather gear.

a wonderful boat this is. he added a piece to the stern and is now re-doing the whole boat

4. The Bumbler

Just across from us is a little power boat with cabin. Sort of a 60ies style pocket cruiser. Very nice actually, but very neglected as well. Two weeks ago a guy turned up and started sanding the waterline, removing rust and other grown stuff. We call him "The Bumbler". He is a big-bellied, dark man in his 40ies or 50ies. You can't really tell. After sanding the waterline he put some weird stuff on the bottom with a large heating gun, which looks more like tar than Antifouling. Don't know, but from what we see, he is messing up the poor boat more than he is doing her any good.

don't know if you can see the bottom. We don't know what it is, but it isn't Antifouling. But what you can see are the uneven spots where the sun light is shining on. This is all rust painted over. 

Here we go with the four most interesting characters on "our yard". There are more, but those ones are very significant to us, because we can always share a laugh, when watching them. Apart from that they are all nice folks of course. Please read this story with a grain of salt. /k.

600 FT Of Anchor Chain

deutsche Version hier: Our initial "survey" two years ago showed that we had a pretty cool anchor set-up. The only thing we didn't know was the length of the chain and the condition after many years in the anchor locker because the anchor winch is working on the 24 Volt system, which didn't work back then. Now it is. :-) Right from the beginning we were budgeting for a new chain, which we acquired last week at one of our favorite fishermen supply stores close to were our Marina is. 

We do have a huge hard plastic barrel sitting in the bow with a direct hole through the hull to get rid of any water that is coming in the boat with the chain after anchoring. This set-up is amazing as the chain doesn't get in contact with our steel hull and we can give the chain a good rinse whenever we want to. 

Yesterday was a rainy day and we thought, why not change the anchor chain. Stefanie was up on deck, controlling the windlass and I was standing in the anchor locker (more a room than a locker really), watching the chain go out. In the end we had 240 ft (or 80 meters) of chain on the ground in front of our boat in ok condition. Another piece of chain was underneath the barrel, which we payed out by hand. Another 60 ft (or 20 meters). 

Our new chain is 300 ft (or 100 meters) in length, which I think is plenty of chain for a boat this size... ;-). All together we are looking at 600 ft (200 meters) of perfectly good chain. I love it. Here are a couple of pictures of this project. 

The old chain, measured and ready to brush

The new chain, ready to get in the boat

In the boat directly from the car. Stefanie is operating the windlass with her foot ;-)

We Are King...

... well, not exactly. But we saw the whole coronation including the new King of The Netherlands. Well, again not exactly right. We skipped the coronation.... but lets start from the beginning. 

The little village, which is our temporary home and that of our boat Ikoko prepared some festivities on their local school sports ground. Our harbor master told us about it, but didn't want to go their by himself. Going as far away as possible was all he wanted to do. He is just not into all that hullabaloo. Well, I didn't want to miss it. 

                                                       

We pedaled to the event location around 10:30 / 11 am. On our way we witnessed an impressive parade with tractors in orange (the national color of The Netherlands - also called oranje), with trailers also decorated in orange and full of kids... also in orange, more or less. 

The whole crowd (we are speaking less than 100 inhabitants) gathered on the sports field, which they decorated in - guesses? Yes... also in orange. We also found a little tent, which represented the idea of public viewing, whereas the viewing took place on a 30 inch TV. They also had beverages there. And fries (of course). In front of the tent they served kind of little orange shots. They didn't last long. 

On the playing field itself they had some sort of a flee market. Maybe 15 tables or so. Pretty cute all in all. For the kids they organized different play stations with very basic but fun games. They had to do it groups and got sort of a routing slip.

The Ceremony Master for the Kids Games

We watched everything with curiosity, met the harbor master (his wife made him go) and had a fun couple of hours. It didn't really feel like like there was a new King that day. Nobody attended the public viewing. :-). Anyways... they had a reason to party and that is what they did. 

As for us; we bought the usual fries with curry ketchup and left soon after. Stefanie was still ill and wanted to go back to her bed. 

All the best from the Stefanie, the chief engineer.

Boatwork

We are working more and more now. We needed a bit of a push the first two weeks and only did a couple of things here and there. The last days people in the marina saw us covered in dirt and dust from sanding and paint, carrying around tools from A to Z. The sun is shining and we are happy. 

We both believe that we should be ready to get her back in the water by the end of May. Thinking positive. :-). Well, not so many words today, but more pictures. 

We need a lot of drills. The other day I drilled a hole through a solid piece of Nirosta. Hours and six drills later I was through. 

Heavy tools to drill through our deck in order to get a new hatch for our "bathroom".

Teakdeck looks excellent. Dry and solid. The whole deck structure of our boat including above and below the steal deck is 7 cm (roughly 3 inches) thick. Steal alone has 5 mm on the deck. 

This is how our cockpit looks like during the day. More stuff and tools down below and underneath the hull. 

Stefanie working on a piece of new floor

Kosta is heavily brainstorming with himself why the hack the stupid Plotter doesn't work. 

This is the heart of our electrical installation. Not the prettiest one, but we now know what is what. 

Stefanie prepping the Epoxy filler for some spots around the rudder. 

Ice cream after work

We didn't know there are camels living in The Netherlands. Pretty large ones.

Stefanie doing the fine tuning on the bowthruster. 

While Kosta sanded some hours on the bottom of the boat. 

The result: First coat of primer is on as well as on the bottom of the boat. Next layer is due tomorrow and on Thursday or Friday we are starting with the Antifouling project. Booya and done with the hull.