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Where am I building ?

First at home in our garage, that's where it started.

In the past I did a rebuilding of the garage with the intention to enlarge the living room with the aft part of the (former) garage. But I had also a hidden motive to built a new boat, so the actual joining with the living room has still to wait some time ....

Building at home is essential for me. Despite the small room for this project, it is much more efficient than a workshop somewhere else. It's save, I can leave the things behind me and every single moment of the day, or when I feel like to do something, the project is just a few steps away. But the most important advantage is the fact I can stay at home and near my family, a great benefit to family- and social live.

With extension the working area is about 13 x 3,7 m2, but the height is not enough to join the two main hull halves together. So I have to do this somewhere else.

Since there is only just enough room for the main hull (or halves), I made an attic floor for workbench and vacuum table. In fact, the whole floor is a 3,5x3,7 m2 bench and a standing room is 0,9m. lower in front of this (removable). With the main hull in place, I don't need this lower floor anymore as working at the bench is possible while standing on the F-39 cabin roof.

However, I still need to learn to have the discipline to be very organized and clear, to be able to manage this job in this limited space. Anyway, I don't have a choice. I would never attempt such a project in another location than at home.

As I am building with epoxy, there is no inconvenience with bad smell because epoxy is almost odorless. Which is not the case with the two part painting products. These have an awful smell and for this reason I installed a big ventilation unit capable to maintain a low pressure in the workshop. With this the painting fumes flow outside instead of causing troubles with the family.

Workshop extension.

There was still one difficulty to overcome: the garage is 2 m. too short so I had to enlarge the garage a bit. This turned out to be a big problem in our highly civilized and urbanized small country! July 2001 the plans for a temporary extension were sent to the officials of the City of Hilversum.

By the end of August they decided to turn my request down...............

As I've said before, home building is essential. No permit is no project, but this is something the Jacks-in-office didn't want to know and certainly would never understand. (and here they are right, it's nuts probably ;-)

Wow, I never expected this. The extension is simply, small and temporal while I knew (almost) for sure the Dutch building laws must allow this! So next step was to raise an objection to this decision and for this we have a special committee of independent wise men. They decided that the refusal was taken on wrong arguments and advised the officials to think about other arguments for a refusal (no sailors neither)!

Now it became a bad joke. Better arguments were hard to find, but they found them, legal ones against a temporary extension, but nothing against a permanent extension...........

All parties were agreed that this enlargement is not an embellishment for the house, so the legal permanent option is the worst solution. This strange situation came to an climax by a special permission by the Lord Mayor of Hilversum, which allowed me to build the temporary (and inexpensive) option. I received this long awaited document in the summer of 2002.

After one year of struggle, the actual building of the workshop extension was finished in just 3 weekends. Even the neighbors like the result and are getting curious about my activities (which are quite abstract for non-yachties).

Extension structure

roof (windowpane)

finished

2010 Changes, another workshop.

While sitting in the sunny garden in summer 2009 and looking at the successful work we did with once more an alteration of the house, we decided to cross out the idea of once moving to our "Dreamhouse". That dream was living near the water with the boat along the garden jetty. This kind of villa's were always far above our budget. However, it is a buyers market nowadays and while having peace with the decision to give up this apparently not realistic dream, a once in a lifetime opportunity came along. A radical turnover lead to buying a house with a private harbor on the South side of the IJsselmeer, without any bridges or locks to pass and with plenty of room (33'x40') for the unfolded F39, very rare in this little country.

So, the whole project moved to a new workshop in Huizen (our company workshop) Much more room, but also not at home, which was a major condition to undertake this huge building project. This of course is a temporal solution with the necessity of getting in a hurry. This means from now on I will focus on finishing the F39 on the outside and get her in the water to tie her up along the jetty of our new home. Further work on interior, hardware and rigging will be delayed till she is at home again.

Much more room in the new workshop.

New workshop.

"professionals built the Titanic, but an amateur built the Ark"

Actual weather outside the workshop