The Rig Part 2

During 2006 I was just getting to grips with how the rig worked.... The plan for 2007 was to understand and maximise the potential.
When the mast was first stepped I took no great interest in tuning it's position - honestly not aware of any great potential. The first trips of the season were not awe inspiring! She seemed hard to hold on to the wind - indeed she showed all the upwind performance of a tumble-weed. At first I put this down to the dreadful state of the sail.
Thankfully, a cock-up allowed me to examine this! I made the fatal mistake of losing the halyard up the mast.... With a knot on the end - which jammed about half-way up! This led to a frustrating day de-masting and figuring a solution. Threaded M5 rod, in 1 meter lengths, joined together with threaded sleeves. Pushed from the top of the mast, after removing the top-cap, until the knot was released.
Upon raising the mast I found that the lower bearing housing/mast-step has about 20 cm of fore-aft travel. So, I shoved the mast all the way back ( mast-step all the way forward) and bolted everything up. Then took her sailing.... Now she points!

While it is fun to own an old boat, it is even more fun to own an old fast boat. Ljungström boats were renowned for their speed... But how fast is she? Being a traditionalist I hated the idea of drilling a hole in her for a log. And trailing logs are for blue water... So, the solution needed to be high-tech - a GPS.
Reaching had a max speed for the season of 7.4 knots. Close-hauled only 7.3 knots. But running with both sails out ( on an albeit scary day! ) gave 11.7 knots. This in a boat that has a LOA of 6.8m, and LWL of under 5m.... I guess she planes!

So, she floated after a while. One thing that has been good about her sinking at first is that the top-sides took up as well. This made the season particularly dry inside. 2006 was a very dry summer and Dobra wasn't used much early in the year. Daylight was visible through the seams of the freeboard.
2007 was a good summer for wooden boats - not too hot, a good bit of rain... And some time to use one!

The advantage of owning a small boat with an easy rig, is the ability to take her out for short trips. I take advantage of this, and enjoy many evening sails; often alone with a good bottle of beer.

But we did manage some voyaging. Taking trips to join friends and generally messing about in the boat.

Eventually the season drew to a close, and I elected to take the boat out late ( for people outside of sweden I will describe how our club works in a separate post ).

Pre-Season 2007

The boat was in generally good shape coming out the water at the end of 2006. Which left me with the idea that I could do some serious work on her cabin.....How wrong I was! It seems that my estimation of how much time I could spend working on her was...Erm...Miscalculated!

The work on her hull became greater during the winter because of dry, windy weather; and a drafty house! All her seams under the waterline ( and there are a lot with 3cm wide planking ) opened drastically. With hindsight I should have built her shed better, and sloshed in a great deal of raw-linseed oil before retiring for the colder months....This has been remedied for this winter lay-up.






So in the late spring commenced work.
Freeboard - try and get this as fair as possible, and then brush. The process: sand and fill - 20hours. Paint with International TopLac ( white), as good a finish as practicable with a2 coats - 8 hours. And I decided a boot-topping was needed - in red. Half a day to get the line right, an hour to paint! ( I say get the line right, but I'll probably be correcting that line as long as I, or the boat survive!)




The cabin and bilge. This was something of a problem for me. Traditionally, in sweden, wooden boats are treated with linseed oil only on the inside of the hulls. This is fine, but hard to keep clean. And if I'm going to use the boat for longer periods cleaning the cabin is important. The cabin ( it's almost too small to describe as such) is also dark. How to lighten the cabin, provide an environment I can clean, and allow the boat to breathe and take in linseed oil during the long winter lay-up? Linseed oil paint with a mix of titanium and zinc oxides...Nothing was readily available, so my long suffering wife ( artist) decided we should mix our own!
Before painting we needed to scrape and sand...60 years of built up linseed oil, and gunk! I hate this kind of job, because it is always so hard to find a good place to sit and work in a boat this small. Hard to say how much time went to this, but easily 40 hours. Then painting - another 20 hours. This has made the cabin much more comfortable, and easier to live in.
I also needed to make a cabin sole - creeping around on the ribs and floors being impracticable. I found a good piece of Teak ply and proceeded to varnish it to hell!

All that was left before launching was to seal below the waterline, and anti-foul. But like I said that wasn't so easy! I decided to use linseed-putty and the paint over ( there was little preperation required as the hull cleaned well with the pressure-hose after lifting in the autumn). I won't dwell on this disaster...But the comments from my club mates revolved around the idea of the new member trying to launch a park-bench!

She took-up in about a week and was dry all season! The varnishing and deck I did on the water - that's what late spring days and good beer are for!

Lazy...or...Busy?

Well it's been an eventful year work, marriage, family, sailing, cycling....And no time to update the blog. Now it's winter...and too cold and humid to varnish...So I'll try and fill in the last year of work, and experience in sailing this weird boat. Not tonight though, daughter's homework and some paperwork from "real" work calls.:-(