Water and flames

13 October 2020

As promised by the forecast, the last couple of days were dominated by rain. The few dry hours in between the showers we used to hoist and dry the sails so they could be properly stored.

Water

Especially on rainy days but also while sailing with water smashing against the hull and spreading it over deck, it is quite important that all hatches and doors are watertight. It’s normal procedure to check the seals and rubbers on a regular basis. This time though we took the testing to the next level.

On every single one we first looked if there was light shining through, then marked the steel to check if the sealing rubber touches it and finally grabbed the hose to test the seals with some real water pressure. The person on the inside didn’t manage to stay dry all the time but after playing around with different rubber thicknesses and kit we achieved the desired results.

Flames

With the rain continuously interfering with the work outside, our focus turned to the small things inside the ship. I took the chance to have closer look at the wooden doors where the varnish clearly suffered from all the hands touching it around the doorknobs. To sand the whole doors would have been too big of a job. Therefore I only scraped parts of it. I didn’t want the touch-up to be visible so I carefully followed the grain of the wood to get a result as natural as possible. The bare wood looked a bit like flames on the dark doors. By applying several layers of different colored stains the flames then slowly disappeared.

It’s nice to see how these little things make a difference in the ships appearance. And even though I’m sad we can’t go sailing I finish the days with a feeling of satisfaction.

Timo Naef, matroos