The ship - the next steps
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Time and again, people ask me whether my boat is finished yet and/or whether I’m already living on it. The answer is a short, curt „No“.
In a bit more detail. Renovating a ship of this size takes time. It’s made of steel, and steel rusts. All the rust has to be removed first. We could sandblast it – that would be quick. But sandblasting removes a lot of good steel as well, which we’d rather preserve. So we sand it down by hand. It takes about 2.5 hours to sand down one metal plate properly. We have several hundred of them.
The boat builder Karl Maria Kinsky has been mainly occupied with this over the last few months. And with organisational matters such as transport to the shipyard. Unfortunately, whilst sanding it down, it turned out that the steel is too thin in some places, and in four places it even has leaks. He’s patched those up for now, but there – and perhaps in other places too – we’ll need to carry out proper plating, which means welding new metal plates onto the boat from the outside. A steel plate costs 120 euros… I’ll need at least 5, probably 15, and in the worst-case scenario around 25 of them. (In case you’re wondering what to get me for Christmas… right now, steel is what I’d be most happy to receive…).
We’ll also have the ceilings sandblasted at the shipyard. They’re thick enough… so we can do that there.
Next, we’ll be fitting a floor and installing a wood-burning stove in the seminar room, so that the boatbuilder and other volunteers can stay there overnight whilst the renovation work continues. I myself will be on board every first weekend of the month for a long weekend – roughly from Thursday to Monday – to lend a hand and run a mini-seminar or give a talk for all the helpers in the evening. If you’d like to help out then, or at any other time, just get in touch.
And, of course, I’m thinking about the furnishings and everything else that’s needed – from cushions and upholstery for the seminar room to a professional coffee machine… and… and… and… but one thing at a time.
And yes… in the Television We – the boat builder and I – were also in the video from 6 minutes 11 seconds onwards.
