Number one: Karl-Åke

Once upon a time, back in Marstrand during the 1990's I had a wooden boat, Orust snipa, built at the island Orust in the late 1960's. My parents gave us children gifts one year, my gift was to inherit my mothers boat. Boats usually have women name, but when the skipper is a woman the boat name can have a male name. So I inherited both a boat and its name: Karl-Åke.

The history of the name is a combination of her son (me) and her grandson (Åke).

Every Spring, after every Winter I only not had to fix the boat, I also had to "watery" the boat so the dry wood should soak in water and expand, get tight again. Every Winter but one we I had the boat in a boat house, that year when it was outside under the sun I had 1-2 centimetre cracks - with enough water it got tight even if I was very skeptical at first.

The places inside the boathouse (a barn) usually was inherited in a family, how I could get one spot there is still a mystery.

I remember one year when the boat refused to soak in water and refused to get tight, I had to lift it up again. Turned out the builder had used iron nails when building the boat. Iron and salt water, as on the Swedish West Coast, is never a good combination!

The iron nails in the bottom shelf had turned into rust and that plank was now trying to straight out. While doing that there was a gap of 3-5 centimetres next to the keel. We had to force that plank back with stainless screws without even think of make a nice repairing.

The emergency solution was to row it, but as there wasn't any benches across, only on the sides, it was a real pain in the a$$ to row.

The engine were first Albin 011/021 and later upgraded to Albin 022, chilled with salt water. Actually this was one of the things I wanted to change with the next boat, to have the engine chilled by freshwater instead. As already said, cast iron in salt water is not a brilliant solution.

However, it was a really nice boat for day trips and fishing!

Comments

Those were the days

The Swedish photographer Tore Hagman have done a lot of very nice photo books, one in particular is from the Swedish West Coast ( Västkust : från Nidingen till Koster ), published both in Swedish and English. There is some pictures from the hometown of Skäreläja and skipper Kalle (author of this blog, LLV member 809). And actually, most likely this Vera Skäreläja is on this picture. And if we take a closer look at the picture there's two interesting boats to have a closer look at. On the docks in front left, there's a wooden boat that belonged to Kalle back then. And on the Marstrand Island, almost in the middle of the picture you'll find "Vera LLV". Keijo, captain and owner of Vera (LLV member 226), bought Vera in the Autumn of 2011. Kalle's father Petter did all the research and helped with the buying. Here's one of the first reports Petter sent back to us in Finland: Tyvärr glömde jag att fota toan, men den sitter i aktern. Finns holdingtank med tömn...

What to do with the fridge space?

In the old kitchen and under the stove we have had a fridge, now we thought of have a cooling box there instead. And the reason why it's a lot of space in there is because the water tank use to be on that side (now we have it in the front, under the beds). We thought we could have a drawer above the cooling box to maximum the space, but if so also have the cooling box itself on a drawer. Yeah I know, it didn't looked much to the world. But there were still a long way to go before install them into the boat. Now it starts to look better!

Number two: Delilah

A Skäreläja in average condition and with an old engine would approximate cost around 10.000€ - 15.000€ (back then in the early 2000's and now in 2020). That was out of my budget, but the Skäreläja boat type is not the only choice on the Swedish West Coast. There are others, like Marstrands snipa, Nicanders' snipa and Gullholmesnipan for example. The Gullholmesnipan had to different versions, one open as my previous one and one with a build similar to Skäreläja. I managed to get one older Gullholmesnipan in plastic, and a wooden build. My plan was to renew both all wooden parts as also the old engine (this time it was Albin 011). However, one year later my life took another turn, from Marstrand on the Swedish West Coast to Finland and the Gulf of Finland. A couple of months after our move, the new owners had a disastrous incident when the engine boiled. But like Skäreläja, an upgraded Gullholme snipa is also coveted and valuable. As you see, it clearly reminds of a Skäreläja. ...

Vera - LLV (Laurinlahden Venekerho)

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