Line drawing, sort of

Here is a freehand line drawing that has been drawn according to the original from the sales brochure which I think was originally printed in the early 70's. This drawing has now found it's way to our new "crew" shirts for the next season. So, look for Carpe Diem prints around you... If you find us, please say hi! 

"Line drawing" Storebro 34

Anchor+Winch=Fixed

Once the winch was out of the boat I could start working with it. Sadly I had to watch the kids at the same time so not many pics from the work but lets start with the finished product. On the right side of the drum you can see the gray belt, this was the culprit that caused us to drop the anchor without the line attached.

The picture below shows the internal view of the right end of the winch once the cover plate was taken off. I needed to take all those pulleys and belt driven gears off and lift the whole the side off. After that it was a breeze to put new belt into its place. 

One more shot of the winch which clearly shows the structure how the winch was originally put together. The whole operation exluding the time it took to detach it from the boat was about one hour... Piece of cake. 

Anchor + winch = anchorwinch problems

Last summer we experienced a major problem with our anchor winch. Eventually the problem lead to the fact that we lost a brand new anchor. The problem was that the winch had snapped the drive belt that guides the line spooling and makes sure that all goes smooth. Well, as there was nothing making sure that the spooling worked the line had gotten tangled and over the side of the drum, which in turn caused it to break and left us with only one anchor in the boat.

In the pic above the winch is already removed and on its way to my kitchen table where I need to take the right side off in order to install the new drive belt. The winch is a Swedish made Anchormatic line winch with wireless remote control. Unfortunately it is impossible to dismantle the winch while on boat since the thru transom bolts also tie the both ends together, thus a full removal is required. 

Here are the brains behind the winch. There is a separate antenna for the wireless control, otherwise all connections are made here. Neat and efficient. 

Here is a shot of what the aft cabin looks like when all the pieces have been taken apart. The beauty of it is that all those panels and trims come out without tools and everything is accessable. It would take just ten minutes to put everything back together.

This another shot shows the extra stuff I found from the boat. I knew that it had a disabled autopilot but I was thinking that all the extra gear would have been removed from the boat. But no there they are. A fluxgate compass and a separate hydraulic unit for the rudders are in fact still there. So now I just need to check why there is no power coming to the control unit at,the helm and whether these units are in working order and can be brought back to life. The units are here on the right hand side.

Oh my, snow and storm winds...

The blizzard kicked in last night and the forecasted winds were up 25 m/s and there was/is/will be snow blowing vertically. So last night I went check the boat and it was holding up extremely well. The covers had not moved and there were no snow build-up on the over.

The storm is forecasted to last whole of today and I'm anxious to check it after work today...

No worries, the white streaks coming from right is actually snow blowing. Nothing has gone wrong or gotten loose and so far I'm impressed of the structure. There was only a small amount of snow on top of the cover but I decided to drop it. 

That sorry sight is a nice Formula 36 sitting there with no cover. It still has the shore power cord attached even though the electrics were cut some month ago...

Stuffing boxes and other technical thoughts...

As I was doing final cleaning in the boat in anticipation for the coming blizzard and subzero temperatures I had a closer look at the stuffing boxes and was wondering if I need to do some work there.  Since this is my first shaft drive boat I'm slightly puzzled what happened here. 

It looks like I have either been too liberal in using the greaser for this box or then there is a huge gap developed suddenly since I don't remember seeing this during the season.  That stuff is prop shaft grease oozing out from the box. Should I just wipe the stuff out and use less grease in the next season or is there a need to open the nuts and have a look?

Well, it seems that it's all fine, all I have been instructed to do is to tighten the grease leaking one a bit and be more conservative while pushing grease into the stuffing box..

The other box seems fine and by the looks of it there seems to be enough reserve for future adjustments in both of these.

The greasers are located conveniently under the rear seats so it's easy to turn them nice and snug after each drive.  I try to remember to grease the boxes if we are driving form more than few hours while still on the move.

Scraping the bottom: Day four

Now was the time to switch to the other side of the boat. Not because the other one is fully done but I really want to get as much of the hull bare as possible before the winter kicks in, so today i had some help with the scraping and after awhile we got quite a large area stripped in the amount of time we put into it. Some additional patch jobs were found but so far these seem to be done the way they should be, so no complaints of those (at least for now).

The paint scheme of the boat just keeps getting weirder and weirder. In the bow we found some yellow layers of paint on top of the other colors discovered so far. I think I will use ablative anti-fouling paint in order to avoid getting paint layers to build up on top each other  The bottom will stay nicer and since we cruise at around 17 knots I think it will still stick and not wear away during the summer season.

Here you can see the many layers of paint in the bow area. Once you scrape the first (hard) coat off it is unbelievable how many layers there are on this bottom. When I slide my finger over the bare spots I can clearly feel that there is about 3 millimeters of old paint that is wrinkled and dried up. Speaking of which I gather all the remnants of the old paint and so far I have scraped off one whole bucket of that nasty stuff.

Now for the most crucial question, can I expect some improvements in speed vs. the same rpm with new silky smooth finish? I know that sailors claim improvements of around half to a whole knot but what about half planing powerboats?

Scraping the bottom: Day three

Some more progress but not enough. After four hours of scraping, grinding and sanding I was beat. So it was time to do some general maintenance like putting more dehumidifiers to the boats interior, which already was nice and dry. I also set one big dehumdifier to the boats engine compartment, I guess it wont do no harm but could actually help to keep all the connections stay dry etc... 

Images below shoe some damage I found from the boat. One of the lists must have been hit by something somewhere down the line and some of the previous owners had done a sloppy repair job by  just putting putty over it and painted over with antifouling paint. You really just don't do the repair this way, period. 

The structure of the list is such that when the boat was made they had first sprayed gelcoat to the mold, after couple layers of glass they have inserted a piece of foam to act as a form filler between the list and the actual hull structure. So, in a way it is a sandwich structure but only within the list. 

The picture does not really show the damage. I sanded the glass away and used a pick to rip out the wetted foam that has been sitting there for quite some time and ended up with a nice hollow list. I think I need to grind some more and rip out enough of the good stuff too to make sure there is no evil lurking after the repair. 

This is so far the only damage I have found form the boat. Naturally there are some bumps and cavities along the keel but those I regard as normal and will repair once I have the whole stripped bare.

Back to the paint job, the image above shows the many layers found on the boat. I really believe that there should be a test of somekind that you would need to pass before you can fix boats or do any maintenance work either. In this case some idiot has painted soft antifouling straight to the gelcoat surface and built up paint layers on top of that. 

I know that this is not the original lay-up since there are traces of orbital sander marks all over the bottom. The paper they have used has been way too coarse, I'm guessing something in the range of 40 or so. 

The paint layers have been painted in this order: 

- Soft (ablative paint) which in some areas is all dried up and in some areas still soft (the solvents form upper layers have gone trough to it) 

- Primer? I'm guessing this is primer, it is grey and peels away in thin slices. 

- Hard bottom paint (copper based)

Everything looked fine when we took the boat out but soon my eyes were drawn to some elevations or bubbles in the bottom paint. Naturally I was first thinking of the dreaded blisters but calmed down and decided to check everything once the paint was out. 

I'm glad I did since the gelcoat is smooth as baby's skin. There are no cracks or crevices or anything abnormal under there.   

Needless to say, the boat will get a real epoxyprimer barriercoat and antifouling in the right order this time...

Scraping the bottom: Day two

The second day actually went so much smoother than the first. Once you learn the technique and concentrate on small areas, kind of small victories instead of major battles. I have no pictures from the first day but rest assured, the progress was slower and the level of frustration was higher.

Pic above shows the progress forward from stern. As this is a half-planing hull there are only two lists on the bottom which makes scraping s much easier. 

There you have it, a small patch of cleaned 43 year old gelcoat. Hand sanded after the initial scraping has been done. This is what keeps you going, I'm already imaging the whole bottom scraped and sanded. Well, after that there's still some more sanding an filling etc to live for...

Winter preparations

Carpe Diem was lifted and taken to its winter berth, the total transport was about 300 meters. It took roughly about twenty minutes when Mr Karttunen (Those who have their boats at Suomenoja know him) hoisted our 6,5 tons worth of Swedish tradition on top of it's boat stands.

The stands are from here and we have one XL- stand at the stern followed by two L-size models, amidships and in the bow. I know that they are probably slight overkill but better safe than sorry. So far I'm impressed by the quality and the range of adjustments that they provide.

As you can see it was a foggy day but at least it did not rain that much..

Here you see our new house. It is 12 meters long, 3,6 wide and slightly over 4 meters high. Naturally I was building the shelter during the week when the temperature had dropped below 0 celcius and the first snow came down. So, no pictures from the building phase but rest your eyes on the finished result. Its up and seems to keep rain and even hold the winds. I'm impressed since I did not actually have any blueprints in mind while building it. The structure combines the best practices that I saw at the harbour. 

The cover and the ends came from here "SAMPO Super White". Its medium weight cover and the best part is that it allows 35 percent of light penetration so I can even do some small chores in the boat late at night using only the ambient light that's used to light the harbor. We'll see how it keeps up with wind and rain later along the way. 

This pic was shot inside the house at around nine pm. Used only mobiles lousy led flash... 

I use cargo straps with ratchets to snug things up, you may see the 2x2 beam that's nearly touching the ground, this is where the straps are secured. Naturally the ratchets are hanging from the cover, so I have nearly two meters of snow clearance. This evening I tried to shake the "house" and noticed that the cover in place and tightened with the ratchets actually support the structure pretty nicely. No movement, only a slight bent to allow for the heavy winds... Nice.. 

First lift, time to see the extent of the work ahead...

First major project with this boat. It's time to tackle the many layers of old paint.

Images for the lift show what is to be expected, at least 30 + square meters of scraping to do. Oh my, it's going to take some time and elbow grease.

First, the boat needed to be set to its winter stands and some shelter..

Chapter one...

Carpe Diem 

How it all began is actually a mystery, somehow we ended up looking for boats that would give most "bang for the buck" and offer classic lines and that certain something you really cant explain.

After browsing through the Finnish boats that were up for sale we soon realized that we need to look west, all the way to the Swedish boat markets. After awhile, we found this one example with a respectable history of major refurbishment (including actually everything). Carpe Diem was originally born 1969 and had since been take care of . The boat seemed to offer most value for the money so we made sure it would be ours. So at the end of June 2012 we actually became the owners.

There was a slight problem though. She was in Stockholm and we at Espoo. Some 200 miles between us, luckily there are ferries. The image below shows the route from Svinning to Degerö which was the first port of call on the Finnish side of the pond, the cover image is actually from there.

Below: First 70 liters of diesel to the tanks at Furusund

Here are some images of the boat form the summer of 2012