Like every ship, the Novel has to go into the shipyard from time to time. After the guests had walked off the ship, we left Enkhuizen and made our way to Zwartsluis. On the waterway, the trip takes about 6 hours in total.
Because of the previous tour, of course, we didn’t leave until the evening and, after the last bridge we had to pass, we moored somewhere in the middle of nowhere and spent the night there. What peace and quiet there was in the air here….
The next day at the shipyard, the first thing we did was to remove the jib boom by crane. I had dropped it a few weeks ago and as it really is a log, it was broken afterwards. Arnold then glued it back together at the shipyard. From my point of view, it was a huge effort and my guilty conscience grew immeasurably. Sure, it happens, but it doesn’t have to.
We used the time to paint one side of the ship. But before we could do that, we first had to remove rust from the rusty parts. Then primer is applied. And that about three to four times. We were busy with this for the first two days before the Novel was lifted out of the water with heavy equipment.
We had three days on dry land ahead of us. The shipyard is not a clean place. There are two other barges dry here. It’s loud and the people who work there must be animals. I was really impressed by the conditions they work under and at the same time I felt empathy. Such a job is really hard.
Novel got a new antifouling on her hull so that algae, mussels and other things don’t build up so quickly. A few things had to be repaired on a generator and we were busy painting. The days at the shipyard felt longer than on the water. For the workers, a siren sounded every morning, noon, afternoon and evening to signal both the start and end of work. This did not apply to us. In the evenings it gets quiet at the shipyard and after the last brushstroke for the day I just tried to get clean again somehow. Everything was dirty. The ship completely, the shipyard anyway and me in the middle of it.
Welcome change
On Saturday, my parents and brother came to visit for the day. That was a nice change. We went to the village of Giethoorn. This place with its thatched houses on small canals is what the Dutch call the “Venice of the North”. It really is very idyllic. In summer, however, all hell must break loose, because even now so many tourists from faraway countries stroll through Giethoorn as I have never seen before in the Netherlands. The residents of the houses reach their properties via small bridges. Some of the closed gates say in Chinese that there is no passage here.
Giethoorn seems to be the Netherlands as people imagine it from far away and is a tourist magnet.
After a week, the trip to Zwartsluis was over and we started the six-hour journey home to Enkhuizen. I almost needed these six hours to get the ship reasonably clean again. However, one side of Novel is now shining like new again. In October we will paint the other side. Tired but happy, we docked again at Gependam. The next tour is already waiting.
