Panorama

Wolfgang Petschenik and Gunnar Behnke’s model “shipyard” epitomizes the type of precision and quality that compels museums, ship owners and real dockyards from all over Europe to order the Bremen operation’s miniature yachts, ocean liners and vintage sailboats.

According to rumors spread by a resourceful reporter at Bild, Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich paid € 100 million for his yacht – in cash. Built at the renowned Lürssen Shipyard in Bremen-Vegesack, the Pelorus is a one-of-a-kind vessel measuring 115 meters (253 feet) long and featuring the latest technology including a helicopter pad, missile defense system and even a mini submarine for the worst-case high-seas scenario.

Every inch of the ship is a precision measurement

In the “dry docks” on Bessel Street in Bremen, where Wolfgang Petschenik and Gunnar Behnke run a small model building operation for historic sailboats and modern yachts in the middle of the Ostertor quarter, there are three nearly identical 20-cm (8-in) copies of Abramovich’s boat. But it’s not all about maritime romanticism here – the air is filled with the penetrating smell of model glue and paint. While a few wooden replicas of famous double- and triple-masted sailing ships like the Queen of the Thames or the Herzogin Cecilie adorn the shelves, the walls are covered with large-format versions of highly technical and very detailed design blueprints.

Whether it’s rigging, an anchor winch, a mast or a bulwark, every inch of the boat is measured precisely. “In extreme cases, pictures will suffice, but the original plans are the best basis to work from when doing a replica,” says Behnke. Knowing the archives or sources for such plans is therefore a huge advantage. “Years ago we had a customer who just had to own models of all of the transatlantic liners from the era before World War I,” recalls Petschenik. Private citizens wouldn’t get very far with their search for design drawings, but the experts from Bremen know right away where to look: All blueprints are archived in Glasgow, Scotland.

A question of millimeters

Gunnar Behnke puts down his tweezers and scalpel, the most important tools of the trade. “You have to forget the romance of the high seas here. This is straight-up precision mechanics,” says Behnke as he places a 0.5 mm drill bit in the drill so he can work on the stern of the plastic version of the Pelorus. The ship’s propeller is about the same size as a standard pinhead and has to be attached to the plastic hull with instant glue. Behnke has already soldered the mini rotors together, a question of millimeters, freehand dexterity and good vision – microscopes and magnifying glasses are tools rarely used by the 36-year-old Schwerin native now living in Bremen. Even as a young boy Behnke enjoyed sailing magazines smuggled into East Germany from the West, and he continuously frustrated his teachers by sketching yachts in his schoolbooks instead of doing his homework. “If you look closely at those drawings again now,” says Petschenik, “you can see that Gunnar was already a talent back then.”

The 64-year-old Petschenik spent a lot of time himself on the banks of the Rhine watching the excursion boats and barges. “As a coaster from Denmark sailed past one day I raced home to look in the atlas where it had come from,” he recalls with a grin. He dreamed of later sailing the seas, but the plan never materialized. At the beginning of the 1960s, Petschenik began a course in shipbuilding before landing at Lürssen after a model building internship. His first piece, an old cutter, is still on display in the shop.

12 weeks and the model is finished

The hobby had taken hold, but the process of making it into a profession was a slow one. “Nearly all of the shipyards already had their own model builders and I had little or no chance to break in to the business,” says Petschenik. In the early days he was only able to get two or three jobs a year, but that situation changed when after the German Maritime Search and Rescue Service (DGzRS) the renowned Dutch shipyard, Jongert, hired for a trade show presentation on yacht miniatures in 1:20 scale. “Then I was in business.”

Both of the men now admit that the order situation has improved dramatically since those days, despite stiff competition from other competent professional model builders as well as low-price replicas. “Of course a big company with industrial production capacity works with different numbers than I do with an individual project,” says Petschenik as he does some calculations. For him, however, artisanship, precision and quality are what count. And it’s working: “At the moment we are more or less booked out, working on multiple ships at once.” Their customers come from all over Europe. They are primarily private owners, museums and the large shipyards that order their miniatures in Bremen, either as display or reference pieces. It typically takes about 12 weeks to complete and deliver a model. “We have to plan a few hundred hours for each one,” says Behnke. Even the Pelorus looks like it will be finished in about the same amount of time as well.