First onboard guests

Attie:  I note that our last blog was nearly a month ago. Dear me we have been lax on this front, however we have been busy in other areas. We have had our first resident on board visitors from South Africa, first niece Elmari and then friends Steven and Adri, who consecutively slept in the new, but unfinished main cabin. This was a new experience for us , but worked very well indeed, although they had to rough it a bit and use the ablution facilities at the canteen, like we have been doing during the renovation.

We had been to Ikea on the Saturday before they arrived to buy the necessary beds, bedding and other fittings to make the cabin habitable for their visit. Having plucked up the courage to take the train to the Amsterdam Ikea, rather a schlep, the friendly lady selling train tickets in Zaandam suggested the Haarlem Ikea store which is just across the way from a train station. A relief, as the Amsterdam shop is quite a walk from public transport. This option seemed just perfect and the train ride not too long. We did the shopping and found everything we needed and apart from the purchases we believed we were able to carry home, we arranged with Ikea to deliver the larger items like mattresses and beds to the boat.

We had kept close watch on the time trains departed from the station at Ikea and having just missed a targeted train due to the administrative arrangements with the Ikea transport section regarding the delivery, we decided to have a quick dinner at the Ikea canteen and catch the next train to Zaandam. We allowed ourselves plenty of time to wander across to the station a half hour later, but notwithstanding, stood waiting on the blustery, freezing platform (each carrying one huge Ikea bag) well past the expected arrival time of the following two trains before a rumour spread on the platform that a train had broken down in Haarlem and all trains back to Zaandam were now cancelled. We consequently enjoyed the hospitality of various buses and eventually arrived back on Linquenda exhausted and cold at 21:15, having initially planned to leave the store at 17:20! One can normally set one’s watch to the arrival and departure of Dutch trains, just not on that day!

We planned a visit to Keukenhof on the Friday 15^th April with Elmari who had arrived on the day before and had the most enjoyable, brilliantly colourful floral experience. The flowers and the gardens are vast and an absolute must for any visitor to Amsterdam in Spring. We went on a cool windless, sunny day and practically 95% of the tulips and other flowers in the garden were in peak bloom due to our timing. A description of this magnificence defies description, let the pictures do the talking. We had planned a dinner with friends that evening and had to leave at 17:00 but could have spent many more hours there.

I think this is just so cleverly done!

While the work progresses much slower than I would have liked it continues to be satisfying, fun and instructive. Most of the slow pace is as a result of the inherent nature of the work... it just needs the time to be done properly. Furthermore it is practically all new to me, albeit not difficult, but requires thought, advice and learning, before it proceeds. We have agreed to call in the assistance of a few people to do some of the more tedious jobs to assist us in getting the main systems, which would make us independent, up and running by our planned mid-June departure date.

Rudi: I went through a bit of a bad patch the last few days! Not a good feeling as I’m sure you all have had days like that! You wake up in the morning and realise how much work there still is to be done and just feel like getting back into bed again, ignore it, it will all go away just to wake up again with exactly the same realisation. I just found everything a bit depressing.

A few days ago I started treating the rust under the roof overhang (top of gully) and discovered that a great part of it is really in bad shape. It is treatable though, but that means part of it has to be cut away, replaced, treated and primed BEFORE I can start the painting. Then I thought, ok while I am waiting for Attie and Willem (our welding/steel expert) to fix this problem I will do the rest of the sanding  of the bedroom  walls that Attie has installed. Ok, I cannot do that,  because Attie took the boat to a ship yard to have work done (which he will tell you about later) and during this process he cleared the forepeak of all the wood that was stored in there and dumped it on the main cabin’s  (i.e. bedroom) floor! Now do I pick all of this up and put it away? No, because he has to sort it out first and decide what he wants to keep.

Ok, what else can I do? I can chip rust away on the outside round the portholes! No! No use doing that because those portholes are being removed later,  because that is where the new windows are going to be installed and then I can clean the portholes before they are installed as replacements for two other portholes which will be discarded. Then I thought, ok I am going to treat the steel where Attie and Steven removed the old gas bottle container and gave it a lick of primer, but I cannot do that yet because Attie and/or Willem still have to remove the old steel hatch and replace that with a new piece of steel and that means more welding and pieces of welding will fly all over the show and very badly affect the new paint. Are you as bored now as I was? Good! That means you understand my conundrum!

Lovely to have Adri and Steven on board with us

It was lovely having Elmari Swart visiting for a few days. Enjoying Keukenhof with her was a most memorable day and just having another female on board made a huge difference. Josie’s son Steven and fiancè Adri  spent a week with us and I made the most of the opportunity  to go sightseeing with them and also with Adri, leaving the men on the boat to their own devices!

They made the most of the day by removing the old gas bottle container and the difference is enormous! The entrance, kitchen- and dining area looks much more spacious and light. A lovely big space that one can really do something with. So now we can really start planning the permanent kitchen. Fabulous!

Saturday was Queens day! (”Koninginne dag”). This holiday derives from the early days during the reign of queen Juliana. Celebrating the queen’s birthday brings all and sundry out on the streets donning some kind of orange clothing, sunglasses, feathers, flowers etc, etc.  Festivities all over the show with loud music, flea market and what not. We took a walk the morning, first visiting the flea market in Zaandam, but it was different to last year’s, this time it was mainly children selling their old toys and only here and there a household article. We found everything rather disappointing and boring to say the least. Realising festivities only start at 1 o’clock, we bought some groceries, went back to boat and went to Amsterdam later in the afternoon.

Attie going down memory lane!

This is a Sampie face!

????

Reminded me of Estelle's Silvo

This really is a special day for the Dutch community, especially the young ones and Amsterdam in particular. The streets are closed for the day to motorised traffic and the whole city becomes a pedestrian and boating paradise. Thousands of people and boats in the canals. Everything dressed up in neon orange as far as the eye can see!  As many shapes, sizes, fashion and as much beer as you can possibly imagine. The world was vibrating with music and most of the boats had its own DJ! Various people selling their used household wares, books and clothes on the pavements. Thousands  upon thousands on the streets and on canals, eating,  mainly drinking and dancing. When we went to bed on Saturday night I could still feel the doof! doof! resounding in my ears and even in the darkness I only saw orange behind my eyelids. Once again I am sure the photos will explain. I can just add that I was very happy waking up with a clear head, more than practically the whole of Amsterdam could not say that! The heads must have been throbbing and the tender winter skins were burnt beetroot red and not even to mention what the cleaning-up brigade must have found on Sunday morning! Never seen so much rubbish just thrown on pavements, streets and into canals.

I think  I have mentioned the huge warehouse called Jowa before. It is right across the canal from us. There you can truly search for the needle you need in the haystack. You can sell all your steel, copper, paper or whatever and you are paid by weight, but if you go there to buy something you of course pay a lot more. The owner is a lady and all this junk made her a very wealthy woman. Well that is where the gas bottle container went, with a lot of other things of course. The interior of this warehouse is truly a sight to behold. Steel, paper, furniture, cutlery,  etc. packed to the rafters. I do not want to be around when one of those “walls” collapse. Certain death be thine! But what a place to browse if you have a few hours to spare. It requires crawling through spaces. Fun but quite scary. Attie has made many trips to Jowa  pushing a wheelbarrow. The best way of recycling that I have seen.

We had three short trips on Linqui in the last two weeks, but the captain can tell about those experiences. New control panel and engine controls installed and a new larger alternator to charge the 440 Amp-hour battery bank we intend installing. The man is busy! I do declare that there is so much work that Attie must get confused every now and then  having a hard time remembering where he was last! Bedroom, ordering toilet, engine room, having holes drilled or what? Needless to say the day is even busier when your work is interrupted by someone checking by on our progress and providing invaluable advice over a cup of coffee.

My last word on all of the above will be about food.  Having French bread with 3 different cheeses, pâté, prosciutto d’Italia  and maybe a quick salad truly beats all other cuisine hands down. The Dutch are not known for their cuisine and we have not found much to shout home about, that is except “lekker warme kibbeling”, pork “karbonade”, various bread and pastries and “Nieuwe haring”. We are surprised that the Dutch do not have a variety of different tasting cheeses.  French cheeses and Italian meat cuts are readily available. They might cost a bit more, but they tend to last and last for quite a few lunches and bread is freshly baked daily. Thinking about it most Dutch food involves bread in various forms as well as minced spicy “gehakte ballen” and other sort of filled mashed something balls coated by the endless bread crumbs served with mayo or ketchup. Not our scene really (sorry Jaap!) and hazardous if you have to check your calorie intake!  Frites (chips) are eaten with mayo!!! True about the saying “you cannot argue over taste”.

Attie again: Workwise most of the time has been taken up with trying to remain focused on the new main cabin. The walls went up before Elmari and Steven and Adri arrived and the room was quite habitable as a temporary guest room during their stay. However,  we need to complete the upper wall cladding and the porthole surrounds before Rudi can sand the walls and get on with painting the room. As with everything on the boat, nothing is really straightforward or preordained and all requires some form of pro-and-con discussion and a decision. And even when well prepared there is the ever-present unforeseen but prerequisite activity or task that has to be performed before one can get on with what one had intended in the first place.

Busy workshop

Attie's version of orange. Wearing a Land Summit T-shirt...we now know who might have sponsored that event too!!

My version of a porthole surround

As Rudi mentioned above, Steven and I tackled the old gas box that has been in our way for so many months. This required a full day and a half and the renting of a large angle grinder from Hornbach after my own angle grinder packed up under the strain. I delivered the 100kg of scrap steel on a wheelbarrow, no mean feat in itself, to Jowa and received the princely sum of Euro 15 for my troubles.  

I have been agonising for the last number of months about how we should install the blackwater system... for non-boaties this is for the toilet waste. We have a long boat and all the underwater skin fittings had been welded closed before we bought the boat and I had not been quick to recognise the implications of this when the boat was out of the water for the survey in Aug 2009. With the new planned bathroom forward, the option of fitting a discharge pipe aft above the water line but exiting underwater seemed the only option that would not incur another 700 Euro lift out fee for the boat. However, this would entail a 15m sewerage pipe which I was rather doubtful over.

Friend Peter Coupland came to the rescue with an option of only half lifting the boat out and having the underwater skin fittings installed while she was hanging in a sling. An appointment was made and the plan was to sail the boat around to a shipyard to have this done. True to our accepted boaty axiom this required another act before it could be done. In order for this to happen we had to install the new engine control panel and controls in the new dashboard and to decide exactly where the toilet outlet would be located, and the breather outlet, and the waste extraction outlet etc.

All this in turn required a long delayed decision on the exact size and construction of the toilet system. This could be a normal household toilet, to be bought from Hornbach, but with a special sani broyeur macerator and pump, or a marine toilet, with its own macerator and pump. The pump is required you see because the toilet is in effect under the water line. Furthermore, what size blackwater tank, now a legal requirement in Europe. While this is possibly not the most pleasant topic, it does illustrate the novelty, to me at least, of all boat-related decisions. Putting these decisions into action required an internet search and negotiations with the local chandler for better prices on the entire toilet system, which has so far cost well over R12 000. When you come to visit us please realise that you will really be on a throne. The fitting of the engine controls and instrument panel took two days with interruptions for the replacement of broken drills and purchase of the correct small stainless steel bolts.

Our bathroom has only 1,86 headroom which means none of the standard shower cubicles will fit in, therefore an extensive internet search had to be launched to find a company that could make one to to our 1,75m specifications and promise delivery before our mid-June departure date.

We have taken Linqui for three short trips around local waterways to see how she performs. I am quite pleased with the result although she is long and slim and not easy to handle in a crosswind. We tried the leeboards on the last trip and this seems to have given us more lateral control so my resolve not to remove them as many have advised us to do, has been justified for now.

Rudi, Lisa and Adri enjoying the ride!

The second educational trip. Peter the master trainer.

Until next time.