A boatyard welder with his own yard
Four tradesmen, a pickup, a portable welding set and a boat twice a week.
What eight years in a boatyard teaches
A boatyard is an unforgiving place to learn welding, because everything you make is going to sit in salt water and somebody's safety depends on it. Two habits came out of those eight years and both of them are now rules here.
The first is that a weld is not finished when it is strong. It is finished when it is protected. Every bare weld outdoors on this island is rusting within a fortnight, and a job that looks complete and is not is worse than one nobody touched. So grinding, wire brushing, zinc primer and paint are inside the visit rather than a second call somebody has to pay for.
The second is that you write down what you found. In a yard the survey is the document, not the invoice, and the same applies to a roof. Where we can see something already failing, it is photographed, written into the quotation and signed before any work starts. We have declined three roofs in four years on the strength of that, and all three were later replaced entirely.
The yard opened in 2020 with one set and one pickup. It is four tradesmen now, and the thing that has not changed is that a job is priced in lines rather than in one figure: labour, materials at yard price with the bill attached, and the boat at what the crossing actually cost.
The tradesmen
Ali Munthasir
Nineteen years fabricating, eight of them in a boatyard. Opened the yard on Link Road in 2020 and still cuts steel most mornings.
Adam Zahir
Traces leaks with a hose and somebody standing underneath, and has talked more owners out of a new roof than into one.
Hassan Shiham
Tests the changeover switch that nobody has touched since installation, which is the fault about half the time.
When we say no
Why did you refuse to repair my roof
Because patching a structure that is already failing takes your money and postpones the real answer by a season.
Where we can see a rotten purlin, a post rusted through below the concrete or a wall that is moving, we photograph it, put it in the quotation and ask you to sign that you have read it. Three times in four years we have declined the work outright. All three roofs were replaced within eighteen months.
Link Road, Hithadhoo
Maradhoo Feydhoo side, Hithadhoo
Addu City 19020, Maldives