Fork Andles

Very funny thing happened today. My friend next door phoned up with his heavy Dutch accented English, and asked what I thought to be, to borrow my axe. Off I went to fetch it from the front. Meanwhile my wife Jan answered the door, there was said friend smiling and thanking her for what she thought was the axe. I appeared with the axe, he looked at me then Jan wondering what was going on. He had asked to borrow two eggs!!!!!!!! We all then had a good laugh about such a misunderstanding.

I'm a lumberjack and I'm ok.

Rotterdam council cut this tree down because of Dutch elm disease, they left it so I came along with handy chain saw. Took us all day to cut into cheeses, then split it into logs. About a ton of good quality Elm ready for next winter, and free apart from the petrol.

I am going to use my other blog for day to day stuff and this for photos and things that are not to do with the building of our home.

Thought blooging days had finished

Panic job today as I thought I would have to start all this blogging again, could not find my home, thankfully I have a wife who is a bit more up to date with all this electronic gadgit stuff. I just got on with cement cladding the new water tank. Will take me a few days to finish.

This our permanent mooring, and so lucky to have it too. More or less in the middle of the city but very quiet to unless it's dance parade day, then its away for us as the noise is horrendous, they call it music too!
The people in the flats are very friendly too, especially one couple who play music with us now and then. Two artists live in the ship next door, they use most of the old cargo area as a studio.

The rest

I may as well show the rest of our floating home off, what we have completed anyway, well nearly.

The old cabin

I thought it nice to show how the original skippers cabin looks, It is pretty original, which is a miracle, I 'll say why in a second. The paneling is made from mahogany so the people who ordered it must have been quite wealthy. The war came 1939 and the Belgian owner destroyed the main engine, we believe it was a Deutz , the Germans had ideas to convert it into a troop carrier to invade the UK. Part of the cabin roof was removed, and an anti-aircraft gun instaled fortunately the owners had the forsight to keep the part removed safe. This is why it is a miracle. The cargo area was used to billet German troops.
After the war they "aquired" an engine from a sherman tank (a GM detroit) which is a 6 cylinder 2 stroke diesel. This was removed sometime in the 70's and an updated detroit fitted with a hydraulic twin disc gearbox. This is what we have today.

First day of using a Blog?????????

Well here we go and how I got here is a mystery, so hard to follow if no computery skills at all.
I started a few years ago writing a diary about how we were getting on with the barge we live on called Velocette. This seems a better way, but it will be hard going for me at first.
After nearly 5 yrs work and a heap of money I think we can look back and think it was worth the effort. I will try here to find a picture of our lounge as it was when we started. Amazing, I did it and now one as it looks today. This is my 60th party with a heap of friends who mostly all live on the water, I am playing the pipes here, well trying to as the alcohol was flowing well. We do (Jan and I all the work ourselves, she is a brilliant wood basher and I'm the welder, electrician, plumber, mechanic, and tea maker.
Enough for today as I can only take in a little at a time with this technology. A year ago I thought an apple was what you ate! Now I'm using one to do things I never thought was possible.