Winterising Meritaten

September 11, 2020 by Lukasz Kumanowski

I’ve emptied the hull in preparations for winter: madrases taken home for dry storage, all food removed to avoid rodents.

Engine sea-water cooling system was emptied and filled with glycol-water mixture, to prevent it from freezing.

As usual, I started with hull-oiling procedures. This year I do it manually, instead of running my complicated and troublesome pipe-vent system supplying oil/turpentine mixture. It never worked properly and caused lots of mess. This year I simply go to every cranny and apply generous amount of oil by hand.

Effects are already visible on the outside: oil sweeping through planks seams.

The only source of leakage on Meritaten - at stern knee - got putty removed, to allow all water out. It’s now filled with oil mixture, hopefully expelling all remaining moisture from whatever cavities exist there. It will be sealed again before launching next spring.

Once all was done I sat inside the cabin and started preparing to-do list for the coming winter.

The first thing to do is to reinforce cabin table - it’s too wobbly to my taste. I’ve removed the whole assembly to work on it in my warm workshop.

For bigger jobs which I plan is to rebuild fo’c’s’le with toilet installation, installing POD heater and making new electrical installation inside the boat, including autopilot installation and place to mount VHF radio.

But for now, while I’m still occupied with my house renovation, I just keep on oiling the hull.

On the hard

September 08, 2020 by Lukasz Kumanowski

Following Jim’s Kaika I’ve also decided to end the season.
Kaika has lost one blade from her propeller so this was kind of forced ending but it is just 2 weeks before we need to go on land anyway and I don’t plan any more sailing this season.

Day before scheduled action I went to the harbour to prepare Meritaten for unstepping the mast. I noticed that Flickan has her mast stepped. Finally, after so many years!

The evening was nice so I didn’t rush with the work. Sails and running rig removed, Meritaten ready for tomorrow.

I agreed with Anders to start early in the morning. I hoped for good weather, at least early in the day as the forecast was not very promising.

Unstepping the mast went smoothly. Directly after that we dragged Meritaten from the slip.

Chatting with Börje I prepared the mast for lifting to winter storage. Thomas washed the boat’s bottom - not much this year, apparently my chosen antifouling is doing the job, even though Meritaten was not sailed much this season. The only affected area was propeller.

Shortly after we were done it started to rain.

Well, we start winter season then.

Glypto meets a seal

August 28, 2020 by Lukasz Kumanowski

Calm evening rowing when we meet a seal in Vätö kanal.
More here.

Time-correct steering compass

August 21, 2020 by Lukasz Kumanowski

I have no time to sail this season really.
Mostly because of house renovation and many projects around it. Partially also because I just don’t feel like sailing recently.
It’s a strange time, with all of us trying to avoid each other due to disease.

However - I keep high spirit regarding Meritaten. I know I will get a taste to sail her again pretty soon. As for now I keep an eye on flee-market (Blocket.se) for details which should help me eradicate some ugly, too modern equipment installed by previous owners.

Big eye-sore in the cockpit is plastic Silva compass, mounted (ugly) on the bulkhead. That’s on its way out this winter when I will renovate cockpit. I want to substitute it with time-correct steering compass, installed closer to the helm.

I got one such item last year - it costed nothing but required renovation. It became so nice that I decided to keep it as cabin compass.
There were recently few more on Blocket, also dirt-cheap, so I got both of them. Mostly because I needed one more gimbal-mount.

All these compasses are Swedish Silva.
Each comes from different era: the oldest was entirely made of brass, with only gimbal of aluminium. Apparently to save costs they went for making the housing ring in aluminium but they kept brass screws. This compass shows heavy deterioration due to galvanic corrosion.
They have definitely noticed the problem because later they changed many parts to Ebonite. That’s how my youngest, third compass, was assembled. Unfortunately Ebonite after so many years gave up and I had to replace it with brass ring last year.

As most of parts are compatible between models I decided to make two “Frankenstein-models” out of these three.

Paint on the oldest unit was flaking anyway so I removed it entirely, revealing brass underneath.

All painted brass parts were stripped from paint. Polishing with 800-grid paper removed scraper marks.

Bearings ring turned out to be made of aluminium.It was so ugly painted that it spoiled the entire compass.
I removed black paint with scraper, white paint in engraving was melted with acetone.

The oldest compass has black card with ivory.brownish markings, contrary to its younger sisters which have ivory-white cards with black markings.

I wiggled with parts to see which version I like more.

In the end I have two compasses to be installed on Meritaten: white-card, all brass compass will live in the cabin while black compass with dark card will be installed at the helm. We’ll see how it works - if not happy with this configuration I will change the card with the third compass.

Last were tests to see if any of these oldies still glows at dark.

Well indeed, the youngest unit is glowing still!
Constellation of Nort-South and Heading is clearly visible!

Mast & boom winches

July 27, 2020 by Lukasz Kumanowski

I’m slowly gathering hardware for planned new, wooden mast for Meritaten. Talked recently with Patrick and Hellen about wooden mast constructor who lives not very far from us. I need to talk to him about the whole project.

I found these two small winches on Blocket, for no money. They are old, dinghy winches so nothing to use as cockpit equipment on Meritaten but as reefing or halyard winches they should work fine. I already have simlar one on the mast, for main sail halyard.

I bough them because they are made of Tufnol - wonder material from 50’ & 60’ when Meritaten was built.
I still use original blocks and genua carts made of Tufnol. They show no signs of age.

These two winches were dirty and smelled old cellar. Probably were kept in some box for half century. Few strokes of sanding paper and Tufnol on one winch got its brown colour again. Looks as new.

The only thing to fix are new springs - these in the winches are dead. I’ll see to it in coming days.