SAN

three hulls, two people, one trip around the world…

Keeping busy

Not only while travelling one can have an adventure. Even at home in our quiet village exciting things happen. While I clear out the house, sort things and dispose of them, Mathias takes care of the garden. He is doing that so thoroughly that he even cleaned the drainage in the middle of the lawn and then started looking for a second one in the upper lawn. But he didn’t find it: “Come out here, I need to show you something.” On the grass lay a conical object about 40 cm long, which had the shape of a bomb!

As luck would have it, Mathias had a colleague who had trained as a blast master. He advised us to contact the Kampfmittelräumdienst (= a specialist explosive removal sqad). So we did. They came the next morning.

Our suspicion was confirmed: It was a German 10.5 cm anti-aircraft grenade. They were shot from the ground at airplanes and were supposed to explode in the air. The detonators are similar to a clockwork. The detonator of the grenade in our garden was still intact. The explosive material does not go bad even after 70 years and therefore this grenade could still blow up. It should not be transported. However, if it were ignited in our garden, our windows and the solar panels on the roof would be damaged. The Kampfmittelräumdienst therefore planned to bring the grenade further back to a field behind our house and to ignite it there in a controlled manner. But the police had to take part in such an action. The police was anyway already on the way, because I also had found still ammunition and a rifle in the cellar, which belonged to the previous owner of the house and the police wanted to collect that. 

It followed a very impressive operation of the police, fire brigade, Red Cross and Kampfmittelräumdienst. The surrounding streets in the village were blocked, within a radius of 300 m the residents had to leave their houses and the school buses were diverted to the nearby game park, where the children were looked after by the Red Cross. I myself was also outside the area, waiting together with neighbours for the explosion. The bang came shortly before 1 a.m. and was terribly loud. The thought that that had been lying under our lawn for such a long time was very frightening. If you experience how threatening and potentially destructive these things are 70 years after their use, you wonder why something like this is still being produced and used today.

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And what is going on on the SAN?

Mathias drills holes

He moved the DSC receiving antenna for the short wave and re-routed the cables. 

In the course of this action we accidently made a hole in the side wall of the sunbed. Discussions are still ongoing whether it should be closed or whether a light should be placed there.

The starboard hull is also making good progress:

There is a floor covering now, many shelves and hooks. 

The window frame is still under construction.

The other side is clad like a guest’s hull.  But instead of a sink on the cupboard, my  workplace for film editing will be created here.

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The further expansion of our solar panel system will be done by ourselves:

Again Mathias drills holes into the ship

At home, the emptying of the house continues. When Mathias returns from work, he feels like the little Hobbit: he meets people who carry his furniture past him. But up to now Mathias still has a seat:

Otherwise we can report that we have now handed over our Dragonfly Trimaran to the new owner. It will be located in the waters around Scotland in the future. We are convinced that the boat has been placed in good hands. Scotland is fitting, because that is the place where we fell in love a long time ago on our first bike tour together. ☺

Keep your fingers crossed that the next blog entry will come from the port of Hamburg!

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