Durk. Cabin floor.

After removing ceiling on the inside my current floor - durk - no longer matched the hull sides, leaving voids on the sides and exposing red, bilge paint. I don’t like the view, it’s untidy.

In an attempt to fix it I took measurements to cut new durk from thick plywood. Against the tradition I wanted to have fake-stripes of wood perpendicular to the boat’s axis, not parallel.

I’ve cut some pieces and took for dry fit. I didn’t like the result.

Of course, these panels will become much darker after epoxying and varnishing but… It didn’t feel good to put this plywood in otherwise solid-wood interior.

So I took closer look to my current boards. They were covered with red, bilge paint on the bottom and were varnished (long time ago) on top. Varnish was in good condition but some boards were broken on the edges, one developed a crack in the middle with visible repair attempt. But the wood! They turned out to be solid wood, wide mahogny planks! It’s hard to buy such wood today! I mean - there are few such trees standing today.

So I took fallback on my plywood project and instead took old durk into my workshop.

First was scraping all the ugly paint. Hot air gun, gas mask (it smelled!) and sharp scraper went into work.

Several hours later, with no paint left, came a step of sanding all surfaces with 180 grit paper.

Oh yes, it was dusty. And dust filter on my mask had a short life but mahogny dust is especially dangerous so I felt no obligations to save on filters.

Due to temperatures in my workshop (-8 C) I had to move the next step to heated place. My bedroom. The room was closed from public for 24 hours and I was applying 3 layers of West system epoxy on all surfaces, fixing cracks with West Flex epoxy at the same time.

Epoxy was applied wet-on-wet so cleaning in water with soap was needed only at the final stage, before varnishing.

The effect is really pleasing. And I have the feeling of keeping boat’s original interior as better than replacing it with plywood.

Voids and bilge paint spill offs will have to be fixed some other way. Not sure now how but I will try to do it without replacing these newly renovated panels.

Workshops

I don’t have a luxury of owning a house with garage or proper workshop. I need to improvise.

Owning a wooden boat of any size requires having a capability to work with tools in relative comfort and protection from the elements.

My solution to this is to have 3 such places.

My home storage (not heated) is used for smaller jobs, like metal works or small details in wood, not requiring constant access to the boat.

For bigger - and more messy jobs with wood - I’ve built a small workshop in which I keep also my small wooden boat, Glypto. I rent the place from my boatclub. It’s close to Meritaten and if needed I can drive to her to prove if the part being built fits. The biggest convenience is that I can make noisy and messy jobs here without disturbing anyone. It’s a boat yard of sorts, nobody is around during winter - maybe a handful of similar enthusiasts like me only.

Then for jobs requiring constant adjustments against the boat I work directly under Meritaten. Building a simple bench and having access to mains is all one needs really. The only inconvenience is that I need to bring my tools every time I work there - and I can’t do much mess as the space is shared with all other boats in the boatyard.

But - beggars can’t be choosers.

Oiled and clean

Having now access to the whole hull inside - and having it clean - I could properly take care of wood.

Cold-pressed linseed oil was warmed-up to 120 degrees C and applied methodically on all elements: planks, floors, frames, deck (underside). The result is stunning!

At this point I’ve decided to not put back ceiling into the boat. Why would I want to cover all these beautiful structures? I mean - would you put covers onto frames and arches inside the cathedral?
I suppose that when wooden boats were mainstream all this was considered just a construction: necessity but not particularly eye pleasing. Hence boatbuilders were covering their work with nice wooden panels to make the interior more home-like. Even on work boats. That added, supposedly, a sense of yachty interior - where all you could see was stylish furniture, keeping the construction details hidden from the eye.

A lot has changed since then. Our mainstream boats - GRP laminates - are mostly made in industrial process of moulding. The resulting shell is not particularly nice nor friendly inside so interior panels and furniture are hiding it. Having renovated laminate boat I still have nightmares of sailing in sewer pipe.
Even after I built interior panels on Motoko, trimmed with exotic wood and nice interior features I still knew that behind my work there is this ugly, smelly plastic hull which I’ve just covered. I could not shake it out.

On Meritaten, in contrast, the hull is beautiful. Every detail of it shows craftsmanship and hand work which took many months. All materials are noble: mahogny, oak, copper, varnish, oil. All structures bare a thought of the designer and builder. It’s a masterpiece of human ingenuity in use of organic, living material to serve a sailor in hostile, always changing marine environment. Joints are made in a way that they are strong yet flexible, allowing wood to move with expansion and contraction without breaking.

I feel pleasure studying it when I lie on my berth and look up and around me. It makes me feel good. Why should I cover it again?

Apart from aesthetic reasons there are two purely practical:

• I have direct access to the hull in case something happens - like collision or leak

• It is easier to keep it clean - I don’t want to repeat the whole horror of removing the ceiling and cleaning behind it

And last but not least - these removed panels constitute about 50kg of wood, placed above water line. Not good. They are not coming back.

Well, parts will: I’ll use this wood in coming restorations and in building navigational table - so nothing will be wasted. It’s a beautiful mahogny, after all.

Washing, cleaning, scrubbing "The Cathedral" !

I took a day off from work to finish the job of cleaning Meritaten.
The reason for hurry is a threat of coming freezing temperatures - I don’t want to be caught with water in bilge and wet interior.

Armed with “Grön Såpa” (mild detergent for wood, smells lanolin), brushes and hose with water I started early in the morning. Frame after frame, section after section I was moving from stem till stern. It took me 14 hours to finish but now interior is smelling fresh finally!

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I started industrial blower on cold air mode to speed up drying and left for home.

Tomorrow I will start oiling the interior.

60 years of dust

During the first season with Meritaten I could not get rid of the smell in the boat. It smelled like old wardrobe. Our clothes had to be washed directly after coming back home since the small was so notorious.

Previous owner was keeping open jars with vinegar to get rid of the scent. It was not smelling rot - as then I would not buy the boat - but the smell was like the one you find in old houses.

I could not find the source of it - so I kept sailing with mental note to fix it after the season end.

Directly after lifting the boat to her winter storage I had my boat inspected by Thomas Larsson. He advised me to remove ceiling (mahogny panels screwed to frames on the inside) and to look behind it. The smell was coming from dirt, as he believed.

And so I did, removed the first few mahogny panels…

It was a tedious job. Partly because all these awkward positions I had to work in but mostly because 60-year old brass screws were hard to remove, some of them twisting apart while unscrewing.

I didn’t want to damage the ceiling (very nice mahogny) so I can put it back again afterwards.
In some cases, thou, I was forced to split the wood to get it out.
Well… Finally I got all of them removed.

It’s good I’m insensitive, thick-skinned, simple guy.
Should there be me wife she would vomit.

Sixty years of dust. No wonder it smelled.

It was late at night when I was done with removing the panels and scraping the dirt. Bilge was literally filled with litter. Dust filter in my mask was fully clogged, making breathing difficult.

As a last activity I vacuumed all the dirt and went home, exhausted.
Jeeezuskraist, how can you get a boat to this state???

After scraping and vacuuming the boat started to resemble itself again