Enough water has flowed down the Oder since then for us to finally tell the story of a certain yacht. There will be temporary repairs, daring voyages, long lists and some brave boatbuilders 😉. There was no shortage of challenges, but it was worth it.
This is how it all began.
Late one autumn, an owner received some very bad news. A fire had broken out aboard his yacht. Fortunately, it was spotted fairly quickly and extinguished efficiently enough that the yacht was not completely destroyed — although it had certainly suffered both physically and emotionally.
The navigation cabin looked like a complete disaster, the unmistakable smell of smoke and burnt materials hung in the air for miles around, and the hull side where the fire had started had lost a significant part of its structural strength.
What do you do when such a major rebuild is needed, while the local boatbuilders scratch their heads and say:
“We might be able to handle it, but when? We have no idea. Let’s start with tens of thousands, but there’s no guarantee that will be enough.”
I take a rather different approach. I already knew the yacht, which made it much easier for me to say a little more about what needed to be done.
So I travelled almost 4,000 km one way to assess the damage and determine the scope of work required to bring the yacht back to the condition it was in before the fire. I worked out the materials, labour time and costs — and it turned out that repairing the yacht on site was simply not an option.
So… what now?
Well… first, you need a plan.
To be continued.
