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!
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