Restoration (2019-…) | Schavuit (1887)

Objective

From 2015 to 2019, I put a lot of efforts inside, to make her cozy, to renew everything and rebuild some rooms from scratch (the shower room and the two cabins).

Now, it is time to improve her external look. As the Schavuit is an historical ship, the rule (if there are rules) is to maintain her external look as close as possible from her original state. For example, when she was built, she had a wooden roof. It is not realistic to destroy the steel roof (built around 1900/1910) to replace it by a wooden one ! But there are some other things to do to move the ship some years in the time dimension back to her past.

Removing the gas compartment	Removing the entrance of the engine room
So the front wall of the roof will be clear of anything with the two round portholes clearly visible. However, the chimney(s) will remain the the view (during the summer, they can be removed).

Hiding the oval portholes	They are ugly, not well cut and the rust is attacking the ship as the external plastic screen is not well pasted on the structure. Only round portholes will be maintain (6 on each side of the ship plus 2 new round portholes).



Roef : re-installing shutters
Roef : removing the window at the left side of the door	Roef : reducing the size of the windows
The roef was modified in the 1970-80 to allow a maximum of natural light inside. But too much is maybe too much. Another compromise between light and respect of the old times can probably be found.
Installing the “roerclik”
Installing wooden hatches Many flat bottom ships are covered with a rubber tarpaulin, which is the easiest way to get it watertight and insulated. In the past, it was simple wooden hatches which can be removed to open the hold for transportation. Recently, I covered the Schavuit roof with a modern layer of waterproof EPDM. Now, the restoration objective is to add an aesthetic wooden layer to mimic the ancient hatches (on top of the EPDM and the windows). It will be a compromise between modern material, look and building time. The ancient way of making hatches is a terrible and time consuming work. You can read how they were made in “Luiken en Merkels” by Simon de Waard, published in “het tijdschrift Info 20M of the LVBHB” (issue 33, 2008). So, during special events, the EPDM and the large windows will be covered by wooden hatches. The external look of the hold will be really blind as it was when the ship was used for transportation.