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!
