Christiane Jannessen

Gustav Andresen, a former ship's cook, initially struggles as a restaurant owner, but eventually puts down roots near the Brunsbüttel canal lock. The young sailor's widow Yvonne Bröhan has successfully completed radio school in Hamburg and embarks on her first voyage as a radio operator. Chally Tonzel, who has replaced Gustav as the ship's cook, is faced with the difficult choice of which of three equally attractive sisters he should marry. Lore, now the wife of the Dutch owner of the Kümo, Henk van der Meyden, knows how to assert her rights on board against her mother-in-law.

The sprawling story of the everyday triumphs and travails of the young toolmaker Jochen and many of the people populating his world, including the woman he loves, his eccentric family, and his colleagues, with whom he bands together to improve conditions on the factory floor.