Preparations for varnishing - starboard side

April 09, 2020 by Lukasz Kumanowski

After work joy again. Mission was to finish scrubbing starboard freeboard and whale deck. Mission accomplished.

To exercise some more I’ve put up temporary platforms on starboard, so that I can varnish without need for a ladder.

Tomorrow we gonna celebrate Long Friday with cockpit scrubbing, vacuuming and taping deck areas before painting.

I plan also starting wetting the bottom, to inhibit excessive drying of planks: it is now 15 degrees during the day, dropping to 0 at night.

Preparations for varnishing - port side

April 08, 2020 by Lukasz Kumanowski

After-work visit to boatyard, to catch up on spring jobs.

I started with second coat of mönja on Meritaten’s bottom - ballast keel and rudder. It’s warm enough for the coat to cure during one week, before I start painting with antifouling.

Lennart was working on Andrina so we could chat a bit - while maintaining “social distance”, of course. Unusual times under epidemic.

The main task for tonight was to prepare freeboard for varnish. I run out of time but managed to prepare port side of the boat.
I don’t need to sand it this year, it is enough to cut down shiny coat with Scotch-Brite, giving good mechanical grip for the new coat of varnish. I also touched-up port whale deck in places where sanding did not reach all shiny areas.

I plan to paint the deck during Easter and then move to varnishing. I aim to launch Meritaten at the end of April. We now have water again in the yard so I can start my “sprinkler program” which should protect boat’s bottom from drying too much in dry, spring winds.
Work plan for coming visits:

Starboard side abrasion with Scotch-Brite
Vacuuming and washing - deck, freeboard
Masking foot-lists, hatches and deck hardware before deck painting
Deck painting - primer, 1st layer
Deck painting - primer, 2nd layer (where needed)
Deck painting - top coat
Whale-deck and freeboard varnishing

After that I will move to cockpit varnishing. I did not manage to renovate the cockpit so this year it will just receive protective varnish and thorough renovation will need to wait till next winter.

Whale deck - night marathon in gas mask

April 06, 2020 by Lukasz Kumanowski

Real spring weather today - warm, dry winds came to my part of Sweden. Soon time to launch our wooden boats. Time is running out!

I went to boatyard after work, to finish sanding whale deck. I continue doing it by hand, machine makes too much noise and dust, I’d rather squeeze some elbow-grease and do it in controlled, calm way.

It was empty in the boat yard and full Moon was shining. While working I was debating with myself on painting vs varnishing the whale deck.
All this sanding I do now is because I intended to paint it white. I look on Kaika who stands close to Meritaten and visualise how my boat will look with white sides.

Kaika is (much) bigger sister of Meritaten and her massive hull looks great with white whale decks. Besides, Börje didn’t want to show them varnished after re-gluing plank seams. Painted sides cool down the deck in heavy sunshine and give the boat even more massive look.
As a comparison I have Bimsy who stands in front of Meritaten.

She is fully varnished. Opened seams were cured with squeezed in brown Sika and varnished on top. Apparently this works and is less time consuming than nåtlimning. It also does not impede risk of splitting planks. It does not look that tidy thou…
Properly done nåtlimning is still pleasant to look at.

Only yesterday was I convinced to paint white.
Now I have doubts again.
I’ve started to lean back towards varnishing whale decks. It leaves me more options for the future - I can always paint them next year but if I decide to re-glue them then it has to be done when I can see plank seams - under varnish.

I like to look on these wooden curves when I sail Meritaten. It is the only part of wooden hull which I can see from the cockpit - freeboard is otherwise visible only to others, not to me.
While sanding tonight I admired these curves and wood grain in her old-growth mahogany planks. Would be a pity to cover that with paint, especially that her whale decks are still in decent condition.
I will give back the paint cans I bough. You hear me Jim?
Varnish will it be this year!

Whale decks are now sanded. On my next visit I will go around them again with scotch-brite to knock down any shining wood parts before vacuuming everything and preparations for deck painting.

Whale deck - preparations

April 05, 2020 by Lukasz Kumanowski

This time I managed to start work early in the day and it made a difference - the task of abrading whale deck is boring and tedious but the work went smooth.

I started with grinding winch shelves to equal level, for new shelves to fit. Short job, with orbital sander.

I then moved to whale decks. Since the hull curvature is very abrupt there I don’t want to risk machine sanding so I did it by hand, with 180 grid paper. It took long mostly due to all equipment which is screwed to the deck and difficult or impossible to remove - stays mounts, life lines posts etc.

After a while Jim arrived and we synchronised our work. Since he planned to paint his boat today I quickly finished port side of my boat, vacuumed dust and switched to starboard side. This way I did not supply dust to Jim’s paint.

I’ve decided to paint whale deck white this year. After looking on pictures of Laurinkosters on the internet and visualising Meritaten with white decks I’ve finally made my mind. I also studied Lars’ boat - which stands in front of Meritaten - which is fully varnished by the boatyard proffs and looks like a jewell. Really furniture quality but after a while I got tired of monotonous freeboard of hers. Kaika - Jim’s Laurin - looks more interresting to me with her white whale decks.
So be it - not only will it break monotonous wooden appearance but will protect the deck better and make repairs easier and less visible.

Deck appearance will benefit from being nice and smooth so I cut all varnish bumps with a blade, before sanding everything.

I don’t sand to bare wood - paint will sit on existing varnish so in case I change my mind in few years it will be easier to revert to varnished appearance.

I did not manage to finish sanding, about 1h is left to do on starboard side but most tricky parts are now ready.

I’ll need to finish sanding during the week - I plan to coat primer paint during coming weekend.

Lazy visit

April 04, 2020 by Lukasz Kumanowski

I was not in the mood to work on Meritaten. The amount of work left, compared to time to the season has put weight on my chest today.

Luckily Jim was on Kaika so we could chat a bit and smoke pipes during long breaks in work.

I removed chains and substituted them with my supports so I could finish sanding deck and get access to whale deck.

After that I started cleaning whale deck in places where varnish detached from wood. Hell of the job so after a while I gave up and moved to troubleshooting faulty VDO mechanical log. I disassembled the whole thing and found the reason of it being sluggish. I re-routed the driving line to have less sharp curves and will need to inject grease into the shield to further minimise friction but otherwise this simple machine looks healthy.
With new routing I also managed to hide the line from the main cabin and avoided cutting my brand new cabin sole. Happy moment of the day.

I still struggle with the idea of painting whale deck white. Today it is varnished, like the rest of boat, but every summer plank seams on whale deck open upon heavy sun and risk leaking rain water into the boat. There are few blackened seams which where there already when I took over Meritaten. I managed to keep the rest of seams intact by applying linseed oil but I got tired of it. Either I need to glue it again, like it was originally, or seal it with something elastic. Sika is what the shipyard was using on another Laurinkoster. It does not look very good but does the job.

If I paint whale deck white I will hopefully cool it down and I could seal all opened seams with white Sika as soon as they appear. She will also get the typical Laurinkoster look - most of them have whale decks painted white, Kaika included. Boat gains stronger and more massive look with that and her nice sheer line is more pronounced.
On the other side - with her varnished whale deck I have a good view if nothing happens with the wood and she looks “Criss-Crafty”. Like a piece of furniture.
I need to decide within coming days.

On the way back I met my old friend moose. Good to see him back again, luckily not in the middle of the road this time!