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.:-(

The Rig!

I use an exklamation mark in the title because when one who first sees a Ljungström boat, the rig is always the most startling.

The Ljungström rig consists of an unstayed mast - fairly unusual in the 30s. This mast sits on a bearing, and is supported at the deck with another bearing. The mast can rotate, and our boat has a drum below decks with a pulley system lead to a handle in the cockpit. Winding this handle turns the mast in both directions.
The mast has a normal mast-track, halyard, and down haul. The sail is raised and lowered as normal, with the halyard coming down the hollow mast, emerging below the lower bearing. The halyard is made fast on the mast step in the cabin.
The sail is unusual! It is effectively a diamond (kite) shape, folded in half, with a luff rope in the long axis. The sail has no boom, and is sheeted from the tips of the short axis with two sheets. This means that when "on-the-wind" the two sides of the sail lie together performing as one sail. When "off-the-wind" the sails split and are controlled independently.
This means that when running the boat has double the sail area than when reaching - just when you can handle it best.

The sail is reefed and furled by rotating the mast - the handle is mounted under the port deck in the cockpit. It takes about 10 turns to fully furl/reef the sail. The rotating mast also allows the leading-edge/luff of the sail to be moved to the optimum position wrt the wind - allowing a better foil to occur.

In practice she is the simplest and safest boat to get sailing on. No running around on deck when sailing, and no boom to watch for. She gybes safely, but can be slow coming about - probably due to the lack of jib. Reefing is a doddle! But I'm still learning to get the best from the rig, and will give regular updates.....

The Hull

I should describe the hull - so those that understand these things can appreciate how unusual she is...
She is 6.85m long; 2.04m wide and approx. 1.3m deep ( this is not confirmed due to the waterline being wrong). She displaces 1040 kg and the mass of the iron in her keel is 600 kg. Her waterline length is about 5.2m.
My father described her as a"lead mine"; and in many ways he's right. The construction of the hull is as light as possible to allow as much mass in the keel as possible. She is probably delicate - but I'm not about to test her on rocks!

The hull is built with spruce on oak with a modified carvel construction. I'm not sure what the method is called, but I'll try and descibe it. The planks start at the keel, as with normal carvel, but run the entire length of the hull - from deck to deck. The only places she has any joins in the planks areat the stem and stern; where planks were cut in to remove rot. This allows all the end-grain to sit out of the water, clearly a good thing! It also allows for the simple round shape she has.
The deck has been replaced with ply - 12mm rebated into the originl oak beams, and 6mm covering the whole.
The coach roof, cabin and cockpit sides are all mahogany. The coach-roof being an addition in 1958 - prior she was a half-decker. The cockpit is completely re-built...

Originally the cockpit had pine open benches. Per removed these to replace with locker seats in mahogany. However mahogany would weigh too much - so foam-cored mahogany laminate was made and fitted. These weigh the same as the original - 42kg. - and keep the weight of the boat original. Now there is good storage in the cockpit, and the stern locker.
The form of the hull is descibed in swedish as "cirkelbågsform" - all the curves are taken from an arc of a circle, not from "french-curves". The deck is also an arc - giving a pronounced reverse-sheer. This is in my eye pretty - but she tends to push through waves. Her stern is flat, and she readily planes on the run. But she has a tendency to roll, an because of the lack of a sharp bow, can wander on the wind.

As mentioned she has 600kg in the keel - effectively a "long-keeler" with the new hollow stainless-steel rudder hung aft. The dead-wood of the keel has been replaced with Larch.

All in all, a well built Hull. With some design quirks that make her unusual, and very "typical" of design outside boats from the 40s and 50s....Streamlining and long,round forms!

So the boat was ours! A day was decided by Katja and I to sail her from Tyresö to Stockholm. We, as yet, had no permanent mooring for her, but were prepared to try a few marinas until we found a safe home. And I was eager to move her closer to home and work in order to take advantage of the summer evenings.
As I mentioned Katja was not a seasoned sailor: one trip from Vaxholm in the Folkboat, and one drift on Dobra. The trip from Vaxholm should have been enough to put anyone of sailing. One reef down ( there being only one on a folkboat) on a late autumn day, wishing I had a few more reefs and wondering about my sanity in sailing at all. But Folkboats are strong and safe, and Katja in blissful ignorance slept and chatted the whole way. The hour in Dobra when we decided to but the boat hardly being sailing.
My first day on a new boat, still learning the rig ( more of which later) and I subject my long suffering wife to a steep learning curve - and my insecurity! The boat and our relationship survived the day...But because of weather we only got half way. Leaving the boat in Saltsjöbaden, and taking the train home.
The next day I took a friend, Oscar, and we brought her to Stockholm. During these days I noticed she was taking in a fair amount of water...Due to the uncommonly dry weather, and lack of use, her top-sides had dried to the point that daylight was clearly visible....That'll take some work this winter!
She became a pleasure to sail in the late summer evenings, and as one of my guests has stated " a lot cheaper than a shrink!"
One of the pleasures of sailing her are the admirers. Many have heard of Ljungström, and his boats, and love to talk about her - either in harbour, or as many have done, on the water.