Virgin Voyage

Today was a good day, and the first (real) voyage for Summertime in our hands. We took her from the home harbour at Tervasaari to the Suomenlinna fortress island, where for 6 euros we parked and had a nice salmon soup (not included in the parking fee). Check out Valimo 2011



For the first leg Mikko was at the helm and Teemu tended to the ropes etc. On the return trip we switched roles and sailed through the infamous Kustaanmiekka channel. Didn't make contact with any big boats :)


Some stats about today's trip:
Length: 13 km
Time: 1 hour 20 minutes
Max Speed: 19,7 km/h
Avg Speed: 9 km/h

I will leave it to the reader to convert these to knots and miles :)

Home, at last

Finally Summertime has returned home, to the sea.

We lowered her down at Verkkosaaren Telakka and checked the water-tightness for a couple of hours before we had enough confidence to start the first journey. She didn't seem to be too thirsty as the bilge didn't fill up more than a couple of centimeters:

We then headed to Kulosaari pier to fill her up. Entering the pier has relatively easy but getting her out of there was a bit tricky. It looks like we require some 20 meters of clear water to turn her around. Hopefully we'll be able to turn the boat in a smaller space once we acquire more skills.

Her home pier is next to Tervasaari and our place has a buoy aft which we needed to catch to get her "parked". On our first attempt to enter the pier we did manage to catch the buoy but noticed that the ropes were too short to reach the pier. After some shouting and pointless hand-waving we decided to reverse and head back towards clear waters. We combined two ropes to make a longer one and made our second approach. This time the rope was long enough and after catching a wrong buoy and cleverly switching to a right one she was secured and we could pop the champagne (well, sparking wine, anyhow). Here she dwells:

Magic Moments

Mind if I clean your windows, Sir?



Fill her up, please!



Cheers!



I just hope the bilge pump keeps working :-)

Seal and Sticky tape

Here's what Mikko was talking about: a photo of the self-made seal for the water separator glass bowl, including the old broken seal and the bowl:



And as a final touch today I applied adhesive tape to the problem areas in the bottom of Summertime. Do note the use of double taping: first the narrow blue tape and on top of that wider regular masking tape. Fingers crossed and thumbs up for tomorrow...

Preparing for the launch

Again, 3 or so hours spent at the docks...

As we expected, Biltema didn't have a spare sealing part for the water separator so I bought some rubber "mat" and cut a piece that closely resembles the original seal we had. It turned out to work just fine and engine started on the first try. Teemu will surely blog a picture of this masterpiece we constructed.

As Summertime seemed a bit thirsty, we poured some 200 liters of water to the bilge. It all came out happily on the other side:

Then we disassembled the A-frame and left just the tarpaulin so that she wouldn't dry up during Friday. Saturday is scheduled to be the big day as we are "ready" to launch the boat any time after 8am... Scary...

Gentlemen, start your engines!

Now it's proven: you need gasoline in the engine to start it! After pouring 30 liters in the tank and various fuel hoses, and liberally spraying motor starter, our vintage Volvo B18 started up. Pictured here Pertti and Mikko show happy faces with the end result.



Unfortunately the seal in the fuel/water separator disintegrated, so before hitting the waters we have to find some spares. Motonet, here we come...

Clearly we must be doing something right

I had anticipated that applying the varnish would have been more difficult as it turned out to be, but no. No no no no. It was a breeze and it took only about 30 minutes to take care of one side. Here's a shot taken halfway, showing both the freshly varnished surface and the one waiting for a coat of Le Tonkinois.

After a couple of hours and 3 pizzas, here's the end result. Teemu expresses our content with perfect mimicry.