- From the model to the CAD programme
- From the pen to the computer
- How to make a year abroad work
- Postgraduate studies not ruled out
- High-tech expertise is also in demand
- Many paths are possible
- Women also learn boatbuilding
- Inter-company training
- 90 per cent of boatbuilders learn in Lübeck
- Seamanship is also taught
The classroom of the future boat builders is only remotely reminiscent of an ordinary school. Matthias Krueger has laid out construction plans for a sailing yacht at the teacher's desk, with a student standing next to him, looking over his shoulder as they discuss the interior design of the 13 metre long yacht.
The event will take place at the Lübeck Chamber of Crafts' state vocational school for boat builders on the Priwall in Travemünde. An institution with a reputation that extends far beyond the city limits. This is where boatbuilding trainees from all over Germany receive their theoretical training.
More daily reports:
From the model to the CAD programme
Giovanni Capizzi sits in one of the seats at the back. The 20-year-old apprentice is learning his trade at Werner Kahl - the rowing workshop in Wetzlar, Hesse. On the cupboard right next to him is a red model of a rowing boat.
Today, Capizzi is sweating over an unfamiliar task. Hunched over the same construction plans as his teacher, he says:
I have to figure out how to get a sink in there"
Together with the person sitting next to him, he is faced with the task of transferring the design to a CAD programme.
From the pen to the computer
Franziska Gattinger sits at the other end of the classroom. "The cool thing for me is that the exercise is very practical. We often have projects like this in my training company on Lake Ammersee," she explains. "We'll soon be working on a very similar project to the one in the drawing." However, she will then be entrusted with the technical realisation rather than the design.
Here it is the other way round. The pupils were first asked to draw the interior fittings on paper using a pencil and a set square. "Now we've been divided into groups and are each transferring a room into the programme. On Friday, our group's designs should then grow together," says Gattinger.
How did she come to train as a boat builder? The now 22-year-old remembers:
After my family's ship sank to the bottom of the Ammersee, I helped my father with the restoration"
She had so much fun that she stuck with it.
The budding boat builder says of her training so far: "At the beginning, of course, you're given a lot of unskilled jobs, but as time goes on you're given more and more responsibility, and now in your third year of training you've already got a lot of responsibility in some areas."
After her apprenticeship, she plans to spend some time "working and travelling", during which she would like to get to know the work of a boat builder in other countries.
Your vocational school teacher Matthias Krueger says:
Boatbuilding as a craft has an international orientation"
In addition to teaching, he specialises in various international projects and facilitating internships abroad.
How to make a year abroad work
In cooperation with the Lübeck Chamber of Crafts, he is in charge of the Erasmus programme: "It is funded by the European Union and enables boat builders to gain experience in another EU country for up to a year after completing their training," says Krueger. But there are also other ways for students to work abroad.
"Many companies give their trainees time off for an internship abroad, which increases their attractiveness as a training organisation. If the apprentice gives up some of their overtime quota and the school gives up a few days, an internship of four to six weeks can be carried out in Finland, Norway, France or Spain," says Krueger. "I think working abroad is an exciting opportunity for students to develop both professionally and personally."
Krueger wants to bring his craft to life for the trainees. He himself is a fan of classic boat building. That's why he organises a project trip to the Danish island of Strynø every year. It lies in the archipelago south of Funen. "We spend a week there at the smack centre working on smack dinghies using traditional techniques, go sailing and some even go surfing!" reports Krüger enthusiastically. "During the trip, teachers and students get to know each other from a completely different angle."
Postgraduate studies not ruled out
While creating CAD drawings is completely new territory for some students, 24-year-old Daniel Campbell finds it easy. Born in Heidelberg, he is half English and is completing his training at the Klemens yacht shipyard in Großenbrode.
"We are basically a classic service shipyard," says Campbell. Sailing was passed on to him by his father and grandfather. "After my apprenticeship, I'd like to travel to France and England to see how boatbuilding works there," he says about his plans for the future.
Here at the vocational school, he found that he really enjoyed using the computer programmes to find solutions to a wide variety of problems. "That's why I can well imagine studying afterwards, for example shipbuilding in Kiel."
High-tech expertise is also in demand
Simon Büdel is spending his break in a neighbouring classroom. He is 20 years old and an apprentice at Next Generation Boating in Hamburg. Bündel works almost exclusively on high-performance boats at the boatbuilding company run by the two young offshore sailing professionals Melwin Fink and Lennart Burke.
"You have to be very flexible in our company. You might get a call in the evening and be on the train to Paris an hour later if you have time," says Bündel. "I recently travelled to Malta and Corfu for repairs," enthuses the boatbuilding apprentice from the Black Forest.
In addition to the two managing directors, the company's shipyard, which also employs a sailmaker, has a master craftsman, a journeyman and another apprentice who will complete his training next year and will then be taken on.
Before the break, Bündel and his classmates had lessons in operating a crane.
Many paths are possible
Before starting their apprenticeship, trainees decide which path they want to take after the intermediate examination.
You can specialise in new builds, extensions and conversions, or in yacht technology, which is becoming increasingly popular.
"I can well imagine that at some point in the distant future there will be a balanced level between the specialisms," Krüger ventures a look into the crystal ball. At the moment, however, only one of the five vocational school classes specialises in yacht technology.
"We will soon be receiving five new engines from Mercury for the yacht technicians, which will serve as a practical learning tool for the students," says Christian Garleff as he walks through the halls.
The 61-year-old director of studies is the head of the maritime professions department at the school. Accordingly, he is responsible for the trainee sailmakers as well as the boatbuilding trainees. However, there are only one class at a time. As the vocational school of the Lübeck Chamber of Crafts in the Hanseatic city of Lübeck is a national vocational school, the students travel from all over Germany for their four-week teaching blocks. For this reason, there is a boarding school building with around 400 beds on the premises.
Women also learn boatbuilding
Some of the trainees live here during the blocks, including Antonia and Dana. The two are the only women in the second-year class.
While 20-year-old Antonia is completing her training at the Greifswald yacht shipyard, her 19-year-old roommate is employed by Hanseyachts. The two of them share their boarding school room with another student for four weeks. The room has some storage space in wardrobes, which hardly seems to be enough for the two of them, and two washbasins. There is also a desk. However, there is not much space for privacy.
"In summer, we often go to the beach and meet not only the other boat builders at the campfire, but also many of the boarding school students from the other trades," says Antonia. And Dana adds: "Or we go sailing."
Matthias Krüger also says that many of his vocational students sail and adds that some even travelled to the vocational school blocks on their own keel. "They then moor in the Passat harbour," he explains.
Inter-company training
To make the journey to the vocational school blocks really worthwhile, the inter-company training modules take place right next to the classrooms. The students in the class work at various stations in a spacious hall.
The theme is wooden boat building. Sawing, planing and stapling is going on all over the airy room. At some stations, entire hulls are being built; where more complex steps are involved, only one hull section is being worked on.
"The goal for the students in the inter-company training programme is not to finish building the workpiece. It's more about facing a problem and finding a solution to it," explains Tim Bergmann. He is a master boat builder and is employed as a trainer at the Lübeck Chamber of Crafts.
The students' personal responsibility for finding solutions means that they take a lot with them, and there is more room for mistakes in inter-company training than in a commercial training company, he says.
The teaching content is harmonised between the vocational school and the inter-company training in such a way that, in the best case scenario, the students put the theoretical knowledge they have previously acquired into practice. According to Bergmann, the inter-company training modules serve to "equalise the differences between the various training companies". For example, apprentices from a traditional wooden boatyard are taught how modern GRP boatbuilding works.
We want to impart knowledge to the trainees that they may not even come into contact with as an apprentice in the company," says Bergmann.
This is why they don't need performance assessments in the courses. What is more important to him is the feeling that the students enjoy attending their courses.
The seamen's school is located on the neighbouring site of the state vocational school. And lessons for the trainees also take place there.
Today, for example, vocational school teacher Ole Klostermann is standing at the crane on the Seemannsschule site with some of his students, giving practical instructions combined with theoretical lessons.
"Stop for a moment! What forces act on the hook when it swivels?" he asks. "Centrifugal forces," answers the student.
"Here, the students have the opportunity to obtain their crane licence," explains Klostermann. Practice on the crane is practised in groups of three students.
During the exercise, the rain pours down on the helmets of the participants. The water makes it difficult to look for the crane hook. After a short practice phase without a task, the students are asked to lower the hook between two black and yellow railing poles without touching it. Prior to this, the crane operator and the signaller had agreed on various gestures for non-verbal communication.
90 per cent of boatbuilders learn in Lübeck
Werner Feyerabend, the deputy headmaster of the vocational school on Priwall, estimates that around 90 per cent of German boatbuilding apprentices are trained there.
"We have just under 450 students spread across the four year groups," adds Christian Garleff. The apprenticeship normally lasts 3.5 years, but school leavers can shorten it. In fact, Garleff says that over 50 per cent of boatbuilding students at the school are high school graduates.
After a long period of uncertainty about the future, the school's sponsorship is expected to change from the Lübeck Chamber of Crafts to the state of Schleswig-Holstein, says Feyerabend, explaining: "Only the sponsorship is changing, the school will continue to be run here on Priwall. There's no shaking about it."
The state of Schleswig-Holstein has already officially committed to Travemünde as a location, so little will change for the students and nothing at all for the companies that send their trainees.
Seamanship is also taught
In addition to the usual subjects and subject-specific lessons, students on the Priwall are also taught topics such as theoretical seamanship.
This involves, for example, knot tying or mooring on a cleat. "But we also work with the trainees on how to manoeuvre a ship to the jetty and then moor it," explains Klostermann, adding: "We work with small models of various jetties and port facilities. That's why we're also quite good at modelling." And his colleague Garleff adds: "The variety of possibilities and opportunities for our students only exists because we have so many committed and motivated teachers."
He himself teaches the students, who are not yet so familiar with the subject, practical seamanship in the summer after his actual working hours. He does this by casting off the lines of the Bavaria 36 "Apprenticeship" with them.
This was provided by the shipyard so that practical training could be carried out. However, this also requires various partners, such as Volvo Penta, Von der Linden and Elvström Sails. In general, the state vocational school has a large circle of supporters from nationally and internationally recognised companies.
Many of them are members of the school's support association. Holger Flindt, who is chairman of the association and a member of the Pantaenius management board, gives an insight into his current project:
We've organised a jetty for the seaman's school, the only question is how we're going to get it off the transporter there."
And so, in addition to the actual lessons taught by Matthias Krüger, Ole Klostermann and his colleagues, many pupils will also be able to benefit from the various programmes offered by the state vocational school on Priwall under a new sponsorship in the future.
