Demolition – August 2017

Soft light falls on this summer morning through the dusty windows and the open gate into the shipyard hall. In an almost devout atmosphere, the hull of the Marabu towers towards the workshop ceiling. But the eye of the beholder inevitably falls upon the large mountain of wood remains, cable clutter and other furnishing objects that pile up under the stern of the MARABU.

One almost ignores the loud crash that sounds at irregular intervals from the yard – loud noises are not unusual on this site.

Only Silke Martin delivers the down-to-earth explanation for this noise:”I let the big bowl empty again, so that there is room for all the rubbish from MARABU.”

Alone I lack the courage to climb the high ladder to the deck of the yacht together with my camera equipment. So I wait a moment until boat builder Axel to get back with the wheelbarrow in his hands from his hollow lap. He does not know yet that I am again on the road for a boatbuilding project with Martin-Yachts and this time will stick to his heels. He is not so complicated and his expression tells me that he agrees to the “thing”.

So it goes first up and then down into the heart of MARABU. Although I was shocked the last time. But what strikes me now almost brings tears into my eyes for a short moment. Well, that’s what they call “slaughtered”, and it is a smell I have never noticed so intensely – although I’m quite familiar with old boats.

“That’s the rust,” Axel explains. And then there is the moisture, decaying wood with all the dust. “When you come on a ship and it smells like this, you know.” I nod. He reaches for the crowbar.

MARABU groans and moans as in the heaviest swell, screws tear from their anchorages, wood breaks. Shavings and dust trickle from the deck, rust burstings in fragments from thef iron fittings.

Now and than the tool is changed. Then sledge hammers or bolt cutters are used.

“Is such a job bad for you?” I ask carefully. “No, it’s rather exciting. You always learn something new when you do this “. Or is it perhaps the image in his mind’s eye in which MARABU, after years of decay, proudly ploughings through the seven seas under full sail with?

After breaking apart the frame of a bunk, Axel pauses for a moment pointing on the handcrafted combination of the two wooden parts made up of slot and tenon. “That’s old, no one would do such a fine work today” he says. The two pieces fly over the deck in a high arc and crash into the rubbish heap under the stern of the MARABU.