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.

Just in Time!

Hooray! We managed to start the engine and run the anti-freeze substance to the cooling system. The actual procedure took only about 3 minutes but as always with us in charge, it took 4 hours with the preparations and our usual trial and error approach :P

I was ready to quit after 3 hours but Teemu kept our spirits up (pun intended) and with his brilliant suggestions everything worked out beautifully in the end.

Here's Teemu with the green stuff:

The night was eerie and I began to wonder whether having a boat actually means you get to sail it some day. So far my experiences with having a wooden boat have been: lots of carrying of stuff around, multiple visits to multiple shops with strange shopping list in one's pocket and a considerable amount of less money on the way back, long nights without food.

Anyhow, I'm very happy we were able to start the engine ourselves and prepare it for the winter. And not a second too late, as this was what I saw on my way to work this morning:

Recipe for 'glykolering'

In our Volvo Penta B18A 75 hp gasoline engine a mixture of fresh-water and anti-freeze fluid cools the engine, and that mixture is cooled by seawater. It's a cooling system by swedish manufacturer Martec, probably this 901-1015 type (PDF).

Before the winter sets in, one has to get rid of the seawater and replace it with and 50% mix of fresh-water and anti-freeze.

For us, that means:
- put a bucket below the boat under the exhaust pipe
- prepare another 10 liter bucket with the 50% mix
- take off the hose coming from the seawater inlet
- insert one end of a 1 meter hose in the bucket and connect the other end to the water pump

In the photo, the red arrow shows where to connect the "bucket hose":



As the engine has been cold for two weeks now, we use this starting procedure:
- switch on the batteries
- run the engine fan to get rid of any gas vapours
- pull the gear-switch plug up/right to neutral
- as there's currently no choke button/cable, use the hand pump on the side of engine to pump gas
- also spray some "gas starter" on the black thingy
- push the gas about half-way in and turn the key to start the engine

Now the engine is running and the water pump will suck in the 50% mix. Continue until the bucket is about empty (also the water coming from the exhaust pipe should be 50% mix by now).

Then just turn off the engine and wait for springtime!

Shopping list:
- 5 liters of anti-freeze fluid (glycole)
- 1 meter of rubber hose (outer diameter 23mm, inner diameter 19mm, approximately)
- some hose clamps

Whoa, what happened?

Tonight I went to the docks to install some clamps to fix the horizontal poles in the A-frame. To my horror the aft "A" had moved forward about 30 cm, making the whole frame lean forward, and also twisting one of the metal clamps at the other end of the frame.

After quite a lot of swearing alone in the cold night, I managed to rectify the situation. Still to be done: buy a 4m ladder and fix the twisted clamp.


Continuing the sad saga, the aft board keeping the tarp off the sides had made a hole in it. Added more "softening" to all boards.


On a more positive note, the engine looked clean and well taken care of, for a 45 year old engine anyway. And I found the serial number for the registration and insurance!