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.

Klara Wappen!

Wordplay again in the heading, meaning Happy May Day in the second official language, swedish. Today we had no reason to yell "Mayday!", because everything worked like clockwork. We washed, sanded, hoovered, wiped and lacquered the outside of the boat:







While Pertti, our team mechanic, took care of the outdrive, changing oil and lubricating it -- do note the ingenious use of four funnels simultaneously:







We also changed the gasoline filter and engine oil, and installed the batteries. All that is left to do before Summertime hits the water is test run the engine and load the boat with all things necessary.

Anti-foul play

"It will only take 2 hours"...said one happy co-boatowner. In reality it took 5 hours but still quite easy. We applied two 0,75L cans of Blakes Cruising anti-fouling paint (color: True Blue). Remember to shake really thoroughly.



The result speaks for itself again. This is a darker shade of blue than the previous owners International Eco Cruiser.



Also, our friend Pertti agreed to be the engine specialist in our team, and did a thorough checkup with the Volvo Penta B18.



Next week will see us visiting Motonet etc, to stock up on replacement parts and engine oil.

Prime stuff

Today was a good day. In about 3 and a half hours we painted the bottom with Hempel Underwater Primer!



The primer paint will help the actual anti-fouling paint to stick to the previous layers of unknown paint and other substances. The primer paint was quite sticky so we thinned it by adding 10% of "wood turpentine". 2.5 liters of Hempel Underwater Primer was quite enough for the bottom of Summertime, with a few centimeters left over for future use. And the end result speaks for itself:

Yes. You CAN remove paint by vacuuming...

As Teemu mentioned, we "fixed" parts of the bottom by exposing the wood and applying Impreg 1 oil. We also decided to vacuum the whole bottom to get rid of dust and some unknown growth. It turned out that either we have an extremely powerful vacuum cleaner or the paint was just about to fall off since the vacuuming took away nice chunks of paint. Next autumn we'll need to impregnate the whole bottom.

Alkaa jo kyllästyttää..

That's a wordplay in finnish, hinting at the topic of this past weekend: impregnation!

Finally the weather permitted us to operate on her lower half. On Saturday we stripped the anti-fouling paint and other layers of paint/other substances partially, and also sanded the wood (by hand and with the ingenious and affordable Parkside Random Orbital Grinder by LIDL -- 19 euros!). This was hard work, as working under the belly of the boat is anything but ergonomical. To be eco-compliant, we disposed of the old anti-fouling paint in the proper wastebins.



Sunday was easier: just vacuum the bottom, and put on three layers of Hempel Impreg 1. 0,75 liters was _just_ enough.



Coming up: primer and anti-fouling paint job next weekend!

Once in a blue moon

February = quiet month. But we enrolled to some courses:

* "Maritime Traveling in the Archipelago" (Saaristomerenkulku) at the Suomenkielinen työväenopisto
* "Boat Skippers Course" at Soukan Venekerho
* "How to take care of your wooden boat" (courtesy of Suomenlahden Puuveneilijät ry)

To prepare for the latter, we took some shots of her underbelly, where some repairs are necessary:





And of course, shoveled loads of snow.

Planks and Plastics

This is why we sawed and screwed with the planks: to keep the plastic tarp off the wooden sides of the boat, in order to keep moisture from accumulating and ruining the mirrorlike 32 layers of varnish on the mahogany.

It's been a while!

And as you can see, winter happened big time!



We'd left Summertime unattended for a snowiest month in ages. So, even though the snow banks curtailed the wind, their pressure also cracked the plank in the front of the boat. So, off to our plank supplier Bauhaus we went, selfservicing ourselves all the way, and then screwed together an even better design for the plank, with gambrel-style end-plates.



We replaced the broken plank with the new one, shoveled some snow, and also taped up the air inlet to the engine to prevent snow and rain accumulating there.



That's it for now, stay tuned for more shoveling!

"Cover your aft babe"

As you can see, we're having a nice snowy winter. To prevent snow blowing through the aft hole, we measured the opening. And it's quite big: 2.4 by 2 meters. We'll buy some cloth to stop the snow, but still let the wind through -- otherwise the wind forces might just "blow our house down".



Other things to do before the spring repairs: charge the batteries. We bought a CTEK M200 marine charger -- and as always, marine gear comes with marine price tags :-)

Another visit - another fix

This time we went there together to brush off the snow that had accumulated on the deck. We also closed the doors to the aft cabin, checked the thermometer (which read -14C) and Teemu fixed the cushioning:

We're within limits - barely

Visited Summertime on a cold and windy night. I expected to see a disaster of some scale but luckily everything was still in place. I guess the fact that we use springy ropes to attach the tarpaulin and that the tarpaulin is not anchored firmly to the ground has managed to create a flexible enough construction to withstand strong winds.

The wind was really blowing, the tarpaulin was making huge waves and the A-frame made squeaky sounds but did not budge:

There was even more snow on the deck so we need to find a way to keep the snow out but let the wind blow through:

The night was not completely without tragedy. I saw several torn tarpaulins, wildly swinging weights and this poor individual with wooden plank banging on her sides in heavy gusts:

If only I had my proper camera with me, I would have taken a couple a knock-out shots with the wind, snow, night-time and massive boats as my models...

All is well

Went to check how she's doing (after a windy night) and found her in a-ok condition. The frame was in the same place as we left it, so it seems we finally managed to load enough weight on it.

The aft wall of the frame is quite open and some snow has fallen on the aft deck. We'll need to cut a piece of the tarpaulin we got from the previous owner to close up the aft opening.

Devil is in the details

But first: whoa, what happened? This is what was waiting at the docks when I decided to take a gander on a semi-sunny day...



Regardless of our hard efforts to secure the A-frame with weights etc the aft part had moved about 40 cm to babord, maybe due to strong winds. The cover was ok at the fore. So the work doesn't really stop...



Anyhow, with about five months remaining before Summertime should be ready for the sea again, it's time to start thinking of repairs. Mikko had mentioned that he'd like to polish the instruments in the cockpit, so here are some detail shots.





Summertime came equipped with a Silva compass, an original installation from 1965. Hopefully Mikko will have the endurance to polish this too :-)



And finally, we'll have to sort out the electrics as well, but it seems to be a simple system, and properly documented too.

Glykolera mera

Some visual remembrances from the long night with the anti-freeze. The time-line details have been long forgotten, but somehow it took 4 hours to get gas in the tank, get gas into the carburetor, and start the engine -- that's us :-)



I think even 5 liters of the water-antifreeze mix would've been enough.



Naturally we thought of nature, storing the overflow in a bucket and then disposing of it properly in the waste containers of the docks.