Text by Christoph Vougessis
Here, I found this down in the cellar! That's also part of it somehow. If there's anything, I'll be next door." The friendly harbour master from the naval port in Den Helder in the Netherlands turns around and disappears in the direction of the cabin. To the sofa, TV and coffee machine. I stay behind. With a pile of oily small parts that belong to the bicycles lying on a workbench in front of me, disassembled into their individual parts. As a trained boat builder, I could never have imagined that I would one day have to prove myself as a bicycle mechanic, but it is precisely this unpredictability that makes working as a travelling craftsman so exciting. Especially when it's a travelling job with its own set of rules, without a top hat, stick and three golden buttons - I don't want that at all.
The term "Walz" is simply intended to explain what I intend to do with my boat. Travelling the world, doing manual work here and there and earning a bit of money. After all, every long-distance sailor has to ask themselves how they can top up their cash on board while travelling.
Long voyage brings the idea of rolling under sail
Since my last big trip in 2016 to 2017 (YACHT 17/2017), there hasn't been a day when I haven't wished I could set sail again soon and experience new adventures. Back then, I set sail straight after my A-levels with a boat that I bought on eBay shortly after my written maths exam, standing in the school playground with my smartphone in my hand. A Hurley 22 from the seventies, small but robust and cheap to buy.
With little experience, but with the necessary passion, I equipped the "Shalom" back then - from today's perspective more badly than right - and set off in midsummer. From Hamburg, I travelled through the North Sea to England, this time with a stopover in Den Helder. Coming from the south of England, I crossed the Bay of Biscay after eight days, and after a short stop in northern Spain, I travelled to the Canary Islands, or more precisely to La Gomera, in eleven days. Even then, I wanted to get to the Pacific as quickly as possible and set off.
Once I arrived in Jamaica, however, reality caught up with me and I realised that it was very difficult to earn money as an unskilled young lad. I also lacked the necessary knowledge to properly take care of the construction sites on the "Shalom", so I set course for home. With a stopover in the Azores, I headed back to cold Germany. During the days at sea, I had the idea that the next voyage would be a voyage under sail. A sailing holiday.
Every job is accepted
In the meantime, reality has once again caught up with me in Den Helder. How should I solve the problem with the back-pedalling brake? I have no idea how the mechanics in the rear wheel work, but I'm determined to find out. After all, a rear brake that only works occasionally is not an option, I tell the harbour master when he drops by again.
He nods cautiously at first, but then waves him off with a brisk gesture: "Who knows how long you'll be here. You'd better take care of the double grinder and the chisels first. I can fix the bike myself if need be. Otherwise you'll end up doing it." He gives me a friendly pat on the back and quickly leaves the workshop. Formula 1 is currently on TV and the race is even taking place in the Netherlands. Nobody in the harbour wants to miss it except me.
So I put the remaining Dutch bike in the only free corner of the workshop and set about repairing the double grinder. Then I have to sharpen the chisels from the workshop range. Enough work for today and tomorrow, I think, and am satisfied.
Bianca 27 in poor condition changes owner
Before I could set sail on this journey, I primarily worked on my own boat. I had bought it in Kiel three years before I set off. It was cheap because it had storm damage. "Unfortunately, the boat wasn't tied up properly and bumped into the jetty several times," the owner explained to me as she inspected her "Smilla", while I looked sceptically at the fist-sized hole in the stem, just below the forestay jib. "This is going to be a major construction site," I thought to myself as my gaze wandered into the rig. There I saw a large dent in the aluminium profile of the mast, directly below the spreader where the lower shrouds are attached. A new rig would also be needed.
In my head, I went through all the defects I had found to prepare myself for the purchase negotiations, because I had long since made up my mind. "The sandwich deck is at the end, it feels like a meadow of moss when you walk over it. The rubber window frames are leaking and the plywood locker lids are completely rotten. The wooden parts on deck are in poor condition. And there's something wrong with the rudder too."
The owner interrupts my enumeration: "I know, I know, the boat is in a bad state. It belonged to my husband and nobody has looked after it since he died. It's just important to me that it gets into good hands. It would be nice if the old lady could experience something again."
I explain to her that, as an apprentice boat builder, I don't exactly bring home the money in sacks, and after just half an hour we come to an agreement. For 1,000 euros, I become the proud owner of the old Bianca 27, which is only able to swim. "Oh, the engine won't start either. But it ran great before that," I learn. But I don't care. I'm going to have to gut the boat anyway. I would then overhaul the engine.
Boatbuilding apprentice Vougessis moves onto the boat during the refit
What's on my mind as I sit on the train from Kiel to Hamburg a little later, however, is the question of how to get the Bianca through the Kiel Canal to Hamburg without propulsion. I also have thousands of other thoughts running through my head. But the joy of finally setting off again outweighs everything else.
But theory and practice can be far apart when you're passionate about something. The original plan was quickly drawn up and theoretically easy to follow: complete the training, start the refit in the meantime and then later find a part-time job to devote myself fully to the boat project.
But the external circumstances became problematic and drove me to despair several times. Due to the low training salary and lack of alternatives, I moved on board the Bianca 27 just one month after acquiring it. From then on, I led an improvised life on a ship that was not yet suitable for living on. In winter in the water, in summer on one of the many empty trailers standing around on land in the hall of my sailing club. There I was able to devote myself to the refit undisturbed while the other sailors indulged in the season.
It turned out that it can be pure horror to live in a hall on a boat building site at the height of summer, glistening with fibreglass dust. Four metres above the stone floor, the heat is intense, and on some days shimmering stars appeared in front of my eyes while I was mixing resins, sawing wood and rebuilding the boat piece by piece.
Extensive refurbishment makes boat fit for rolling
In the first summer I worked on the hull above the waterline. It was time to close the large hole in the stem again. When my Bianca 27 had repeatedly bumped against the jetty with the stem, not only had this hole opened up, but there was also whitewash far behind the break. In order to restore the desired stability, I removed the white crack and generously shafted the laminate in order to create large bonding areas for the new laminate. Once the stem had been restored, it was time to paint the hull. The new epoxy resin laminate needed to be protected from UV radiation. And because I wanted to rid the hull of its chalked white anyway, I painted it in the first year of the refit - contrary to the logical sequence, according to which the paint is only applied at the end.
The second summer was dedicated to the underwater hull. A previous owner had laminated additional ballast to the keel so that the boat lay slightly on its nose in the water and no longer floated in the design waterline. So one fine summer's day, I hung my home in the crane straps of my training yard, took the big Flex outside and started to flex the bead off the keel fin. In the end, according to the crane scales, two hundred kilos of lead fell off along with the laminate.
For the rest of the summer, I removed antifouling, primer and lots of osmosis bubbles from the underwater hull, found some amateurish repairs underneath all the paint and repaired small areas of laminate here and there. Larger construction sites also came to light. The Bianca 27 is a long keeler with an attached rudder. It is hollow on the inside and the keel is filled with foam in the area where the rudder is attached. The rudder blade itself was completely delaminated, so I ended up building a new one. The foam in the keel was soaking wet due to seawater ingress, so I opened the keel fin and completely refoamed the aft area - the ballast was laminated in the forward area. Once the structure below the waterline had been restored, the underwater hull was covered in a thick epoxy coat to counteract osmosis. This was followed by several coats of primer and antifouling.
So after two years I stood in front of my Bianca, having restored everything from the keel sole to the edge of the deck, and was still highly motivated and full of plans: "Next summer we'll start building!"
The third summer of renovation is all about construction
This third summer of restoration followed on seamlessly. Once the hibernation was over, the tools were brought out and the work continued. With little effort, I pushed the windows out of the superstructure at the start of this final stage. The old rubber seals would no longer have withstood a wave. I used the shape of the windows to make templates and milled new ones out of eight millimetre thick acrylic glass, which I wanted to attach later in the year with bolts and PU glue.
Next, I reworked all the wooden parts on deck. And there were quite a few on the Bianca 27. The coaming, skirting board, sliding hatch, forward hatch, forecastle cover and hatch garage were in a bad state, many of them already rotten. The cockpit lid and sliding hatch garage had to be completely rebuilt, but I was able to salvage the rest. The winches were fitted with thick cambala underlays instead of the thin stainless steel profiles and the remaining woodwork was given several coats of boat varnish. After the beautiful woodwork, it was time for the sandwich deck. From the forestay to the winches, I opened up the entire deck, removed the plywood and wet foam and made the hinges so that I could later join the new laminate to the old one.
Once this work had also been completed, we got to work on the old Bukh DV 20, an indestructible engine that reminded me of the children's series "Little Red Tractor" because of its colour scheme. After a month of work, it was happily chugging along again, not yet in the water but on a Euro pallet, surrounded by club members with bottles of beer in their hands, which we held to our mouths in a toast. Using a self-made towing device, I heaved the old diesel back into the Bianca, installed it, carefully realigned it and also took the opportunity to install a new stern tube and stuffing box.
This busy summer also came to an end at some point, and in the last warm days of the year I finally painted the superstructure including the deck and cockpit. The paint I had bought as grey for the deck turned out to be baby blue, but I didn't really care at that point. I just wanted to finish. Last but not least, I built two dorade boxes for the fans and, as the crowning glory, finally united the newly built windows with the superstructure.
By the end of the third summer, the storm-damaged "Smilla" had become my "Tallawah" - and was unrecognisable. I really did have a new boat.
The start of rolling feels unreal
When I finally stand at the mast on 18 July last summer and hoist the new mainsail and genoa, I am so filled with happiness that I almost can't breathe. I look forward to the bow and the water in front of me in a daze. The "Tallawah" pushes powerfully through the small Elbe waves and lives up to her new name - Tallawah, the Jamaican word for strong.
However, the boat enters the waves rather gently, throwing tiny fountains of spray to each side, where they turn into miniature rainbows. You could almost think that "Tallawah" is just as happy as I am to be out and about again after such a long time. This is our first time on the water together - I've never sailed my boat before.
It is therefore easy to say goodbye. After all the work, it's finally time to shout "See you soon!" to friends and family. I left the harbour under engine power, and now we disappear from the Elbmarsch as if by magic. But it's only when the Elbe widens from horizon to horizon in the evening in the light of the last rays of sunshine and I can already smell the North Sea that I really realise: "I'm on my way again. Unbelievable."
I have the first job of my self-composed roll right at my first stop on Heligoland. The hall of the sailing club has to be insulated. My brother Jonas, who is sailing with me, is not at all enthusiastic about this: "I can't take any more!" he says, sweating.
Jonas stands on the penultimate rung of the ladder and tries to stuff a large piece of rock wool between two wooden beams. He looks miserable in his protective suit, gloves and mask. He comes down the ladder and knocks the dirt off his suit: "You know, when you invited me to sail part of the way with you, I didn't think you'd find work on Heligoland and stay here for three weeks."
I use a screwdriver to open two bottles of beer, which I take from a sponsored crate, and hand him one of them. "That's the beauty of travelling. You never know what will happen tomorrow. And what you can take with you on the way, you should take with you," I say contentedly. "Work, sun and sea. That's great! Let's just get this done quickly and then we'll be on our way again in no time. I'll get the circular saw, hammer and cordless screwdriver and the Japanese saws for the crosspieces."
My brother has to laugh and shakes his head. "I can't believe you have all this on board. The 'Tallawah' really is a floating workshop." I nod with satisfaction: "That was exactly the plan. See you soon!"
