The marineforum often reports on deployments and exercises, but not much on maintenance phases. We wanted to know from the commander of the EGV Berlin, frigate captain Karsten Uwe Schlüter, what can happen during this time and how to manage it.

How is Berlin doing? What is the crew doing?

The Berlin is in the final stages of the maintenance project, and the men and women of the Berlin are doing their best every day to ensure that the project is not delayed any further. In addition to the usual supervision of the project, they are also involved in completion work. Without the courageous and committed intervention of my crew, further delays would be foreseeable.

It is a break to switch from deployment to shipyard. How do you deal with that?

I took command of the Berlin on 19 September 2023, more than seven months after the start of the shipyard project. At this point, the crew was split between two locations and - as is usual in a shipyard project - somewhat decimated. During the entire time the shipyard was in operation, crew members from the Berlin were inevitably "loaned out" to other units: to our sister ships, civilian auxiliary ships, frigates and even the Gorch Fock. Although the people remain in training, the shipyard laytime is not always a respite from a demanding operational period. The challenge is this,