Category: Uncategorized

Work Done in the Summer of 2020

At the start of the year we had to move Nova Cura to a new temporary location because our old location was over two city heating pipes that had to be replaced.

Luckily the harbour office could place us in a nice sunny location in the middle of the city (Wijnhaven) for the summer season. Since we could not easily travel, we then decided to work on the ship, as below:

• Repainted the three vertical stacks (main engine exhaust, CV boiler exhaust and engine room air intake)
• Replaced CV boiler exhaust outlet (H piece)
• Repainted cargo sides and deck walk-ways
• Repainted external sides (top)
• Repainted name board davits
• Repainted wooden cargo covers
• Repainted the stern davit
• Added a one-piece canvas cover to protect the wooden hatches. Dekkleed supplied by Den Boer Sails
• Repainted wheel house roof
• Repainted aerial mast
• Revarnished the foredeck mast
• Repainted bolderkasts
• Repainted foredeck engine room hatch
• Repainted stern quarter
• Replaced the old wood burning stove with a Nordic Fire Stlyo (pellet burning stove)

Yesterday one of our Scania start batteries exploded when I started the engine, which was not nice. Removing them from the ship was also not nice – they sure were heavy. Anyway, the Accu company Van Andel ran a check on the remaining batteries and we replaced most of them as their start capacity was also very much reduced (batteries were between 7 and eight years old).

The following batteries were replaced

• Main engine (Scania) start batteries: 2 times 180 ah (were 240 ah, but 180 ah is more manageable)
• Bow thruster (DAF) start batteries: 2 times 120 ah
• Lister generator start battery: 1 Redtop

The 920 ah main battery bank was seen to be in good health.

In August 2013 we had to rebuild the bridge to the ship as the old wooden stairs were showing signs of serious fatigue and guests did not like the open approach. Luckily, I managed to get my Brother Howard to design and fabricate the steel construction that has been operational for the last seven years.

The original cooling for the Scania was managed by a ‘milk cooler’ which occupied a lot of room in the engine room. However, the trigger for replacing the cooling system was the rust damage inside of the cooler box. The photo gallery below shows the work performed by Het Anker in October 2012.

We damaged our cast-iron propeller in April 2011 and it had to be replaced. This is just a photo record of the replacement.

Since I had sometime available over the 2019/2020 Christmas period, I decided to rebuild the site and to create a formal record of the ship. As of 28 December, it is still work-in-progress.