Category: Segeln

It’s been a while. Why didn’t we write? Well there is one big reason. There has just been one weekend off work until everything has been locked down by you know what. That weekend in February we tested the function of a tool, that turned out to be crucial for further boat work: We proudly present the TERCOO. Directly from hell, this disc does not smear soft coating…. It’s like a million finger nails scrape deep into the steel and take off everything(!). We tried it on the rudder and well… let’s say …. If it would not rust, we would steer the boat with a silver spoon by now. Who would have thought how nice naked steel can look like. But of course we had to protect that baby. First a layer of Owatrol and then (long time later) actual paint.

When Benno first came up with the idea to work on the boat for just one day I thought he was crazy. Because he came all the way from Innsbruck – just for that. Turns out he does not mind traveling through night and is able to sleep in busses. I could’nt do it – he can and so he came to Berlin.

You remember the strip inside the boat where we cut out the old dark wood to make space for some electrics? Well benno brought new wood and he cut it precise. I had to work that day but at aroung 6 p.m. I joined him and we worked until midnight. Here is some media coverage of that short episode.

Lets start with the highlight as usual. A summary clip of these days (done bei Benni again)

At the beginning of any boat refit I assume one just sometimes looks away when stuff is too messy. The electrical wires were definitely one of those things. After a while of staring at THIS

Lets start with a video! (Benjamins beautiful quick edit, in German though)

Since Benjamin and me both work jobs, we decided to get startet on the boat (for real) taking a week off. We chose the seven days before christmas. Side-Note: Never do that… very stressfull in the end.

We were told that we can not work on the hull (outside), since new paint would need night temperatures above at least 10°C. So the decision was easy. We started with the inner hull and the bilge. The bilge is the deepest part of the boat (in our case the inside of the keel) where water collects. For that role the bilge is a rather wet place in normal sailing conditions and since we are working on a 40 year old steel boat there was plenty rust to get rid of. Very dirty work.

So MOBILE (we dont know if we wanna keep the old name) was just sitting there, in the ugly fall that northern Germany is famous for. Uncovered still from the sale… so that everybody could have a good look at her. We had to do something about it, because leaves and rain were dirting our baby up pretty bad.

Having the groundskeeper of the Berlin Yacht Club as previous owner already paid out. We were allowed to use the clubs high pressure water sprayer.

Well I probably annoyed every single person in my private life with my crazy “boat idea” for a couple of years now. So it was time to bring this thing into action. Or as Benni put it “Max, our life will never get less complicated than right now. We either get real or we will never do it” (or similar). So he started looking and came up with a pretty darn beautiful boat.

• Steel hull
• 12 Meters
• seaworthy and sitting in the dry