The MARABU glides silently across the Lake Constance on this warm and humid summer afternoon. Hardly a breath of wind can be felt and yet her sails are lightly filled and move her across the calm water as if by magic.
Something decisive has changed since my last visit in October. After years of breaking, hammering and sawing, there is an almost reverent calm over the MARABU just a few weeks before the launch.
Before master boatbuilder Axel retires and leaves the shipyard with the almost completed MARABU, he mounts the new anchor windlass on the foredeck.
Patience is required from everyone involved. Just a year ago, it looked as if MARABU would be handed over to its new owner on June 8, 2023 floating and in a festive ceremony. Now it wasn’t quite enough.
And now it works after all. After a break of a few months, I turn up at the shipyard at just the right moment. It’s mid-May 2023 and today the last of around 75 deck beams is being made.
For weeks now, Central Europe has once again been suffering from climatic conditions. High temperatures and persistent drought have caused the level …
The hull fully planked, the future underwater hull spackled bright white, this is how the MARABU appears to be perched…
Loud hammer blows have been clearly audible for days, even outside the shipyard gate. Staying in the spacious hall is only…
“I try to write in a different style every time”… Work on the hull of MARABU has progressed …
It has been almost three years since MARABU was last worked on, the last two years of which the world has been…
With a little queasy feeling I open the door to Edgar Baur’s steel and metal construction company in Radolfzell shortly before Christmas this Thursday. The environment, the tools, the material, the people…
The players of today’s “boatbuilding Mikado” have already gathered around MARABU in the morning. The goal of the game is quickly explained: …
The first year of MARABU’s new beginning is over and Axel is at the end. After he fought his way through rust and mildew …
Years of heavy labour in the troubled salt water of the Atlantic ocean, journeys through the Bay of Biscay to Spain, long blows to the west to America or St. Petersburg in the east have especially affected…
“It’s straight.” Axel holds a stencil made of thick veneer to a row of wooden blocks which are screwed to MARABU’s inner side in the middle of an already removed rib.
I look at this from the opposite side and am firmly convinced that…
Retrospective 18 December 2009 – MARABU has arrived on the European mainland from Ipswich UK on a flat bed trailer. We will continue our journey across Germany to Radolfzell on Lake Constance. The phone rings at the destination – at Martin-Yachten …
Several generations of boat builders have seen MARABU come and go. When removing the stem and forestem, the many layers of varnish become visible, which have superimposed themselves like annual rings of a tree in the front area of the bilge …
With the keel a ship gets its identity, it is the basic building block, the backbone that supports everything. It is therefore not surprising that …
MARABU seems to have a “hangover” – hanging old and tired on the ropes early this morning: an adventurous construction from the “normal” gantry crane and an additional “lever crane” occupies the entire yard of Martin Shipyard. Tension and nervousness are reflectet …
From the outside, MARABU looks much as it has done for the last weeks. Its lines convey tranquillity and stability even when it is standing dilapidated in the workshop hall. But appearances can be deceptive …
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 …
“Because you have to save such a ship “- that was Josef Martin’s short answer to my question WHY.
Now there is something sad about what is left …
X10 originated from a dark chapter of German history. Gradually, the seafaring cruisers, as yachts measured by Germanischer Lloyd as seaworthy yachts, replaced the national cruisers that were then widespread on German waters. They were also built in various…