The galley

27 May 2020

So, I have been asked to give an update on the maintenance and how things are going on board of the OOSTERSCHELDE.

Maintenance wise, things are going well. The ship is looking better every day. We are using the extra time we have by painting and varnishing a lot. We are also thinking about other, more structural, projects inside and the rigging that we normally don’t have time for.

One of those projects was replacing a pipe underneath the floor of the galley. This pipe couldn’t be reached by crawling and was hidden behind a layer of tiles and concrete about 20cm thick.

I was very happy to have been given the task. With the piled up frustration of a sailor not being able to sail, not able to fly home and not able to go to a bar for months, I felt more than ready to break some concrete.

So, after a day of smashing, breaking, huffing and cursing, my goal came in sight (thankfully at the right spot). I was able to do the work. After this I felt ready again to go back to the last finishing touches of the varnishing outside.

The painting on deck is almost reaching a point where we can say that the painting is done. Which is a position we don’t find ourselves very often and is quite special for a ship like this. This has also something to do with the fact that the outside was sandblasted a few years abo. But most of it is thanks to a lot of patience and good work by a lot of different people. I think that we can be very proud of it.

Greetings from Rotterdam.

Jonathan (first mate)