Picture - access to foredeck

As you can see, right now, the access to the foredeck is, let's say, industrial?

Certainly not too friendly for kids or older people. That's too bad because the view is great.

We plan to put in stairs like the picture below. A lot more comfortable don't you agree?

We also plan to make a foundation on the starboard side to install a hydraulic crane at some point in the future.

Picture - winch room

Right now, the winches used to get the fishing nets on board again are located below the bridge. The picture below, of a ship being scrapped, shows them in more detail.

We plan to convert this area to a dining. We'll also made it wider so you can actually walk around the bridge (see the section with "drawings" section of this blog) and have more space below.

This winch room will also be extended forward to accommodate a living room. On top of it all, a 5 wide and 9 meter (16 x 29 ft.) long sun deck, connecting with the top deck from which this picture was taken.

And, we'll still have 1.7 x 8.5 meters (5.5x 27 ft.) of free main deck space on each side.

By the way, the bridge house and upward is all aluminium.

Picture - front deck

Here we are at the forward top deck of the ship. The red structure on the right is the anchor chain guide. The winch is below deck.
We plan to make a minor modification to put this whole structure below deck and get a nice clean deck.
The hatch on the left gives access to the anchor winch chamber. Through it, you can also access what is now the forward engine room which we are going to convert into two staterooms.
Obviously, access won't be through this hatch :-) !
But, we plan to put a small crew cabin with 2 berths in the anchor winch room.

Picture - anchor winch

Every two weeks I'll publish a picture with related comment on the subject.

I'll start with the anchor on this vessel. North Sea fishermen hardly ever anchored so ours needs some cleaning up.

We may add a 2nd anchor in the stern. Especially if we are going to cruise in tight spaces like the San Blas Islands or at anchor at the Balboa Yacht Club, at the entrance of the Panama Canal, this will give us total control about the area we need for safe anchoring.

Pictures

I'll soon be adding some pictures to this blog. For now, here you see the vessel at its location in Stellendam, The Netherlands and me, next to similar ship in a dry dock. Notice how fishing vessels have a nozzle around their prop to improve their prop efficiency, particularly at low speeds.

It may be removed, depending on the outcome of the what the prop engineers will say . At higher speed (over 8 knots), depending on the design, they may make the prop more efficient.