The renovation of our boat Manta

Manta was built in 1959 at Larsmo, Finland. It is a quite typical small fishing boat from the West Coast of Finland. First owner of the boat was Aatos Hemminki who ordered the boat from boatbuilder Svenfelt to replace a slightly smaller fishing boat that got wrecked in a storm.

The boat was fitted with a small 4 hp Bernard W 110 petrol engine although the older boat had small sails. The hull was still similar to the Bothnic gulf traditional fishing boats that had sails.

The boat was used as a fishing boat to the mid-80's till it become too hard to use the boat alone and the boat was abandoned to the backyard of the owner.

At the summer of 1997 we decided to repair the boat with my fiancée Sari Hemminki. Since we knew that the hull was suitable for sailing, we wanted to construct a small rig for the boat. We decided to get real cotton sails no matter the price and trouble.

 keula.jpg  The boat looked pretty miserable after the fifteen-year abandonment. Tar on the outside was partly worn off in the sun and rain and the rest was covered with green moss. The rubrails were rotten and part of the keel sounded like it might be rotten inside.

As it turned out, the keel was badly rotten. Not much could be seen to the outside and the condition of the keel was revealed only after we started to take the boat apart. There was only a thin surface of sound wood and the rest was rotten away. I believe that the linseed oil impregnation protected the outer surface of the keel, but the oil hadn't soaked any deeper than about 1/2 inches.

  Inside the boat everything looked much less sad. The tar surface was quite OK although it had very much sand stuck into it. In the middle of the picture you can see the engine bed and the end flange of the propeller shaft.

It took about three months to fix the boat, because most of the work was done on nights and weekends. More about the restoration later.

 Manta at the "Viaporin Tuoppi", a race around the old Viapori Fortress Islands in Helsinki, Finland. The race is only for wooden boats. We didn't participate the race since there wasn't a class for our kind of boats. Still it was quite an experience to be among hundreds of wooden boats in the historical island of Viapori. It was a highlight of the summer and also some sort of a goal for our restoration process. It is a long way for a boat from backyard to here...

 That's me, looking like I owned the boat.

You can follow the repair from step to step or take a shortcut to a page you find most interesting.

Repairing the hull, fixing the keel and replacing rubrails

Cotton sails and building the rig

Rigging

Sailing with Manta

Some technical data:

Length:               17 feet, 5.5 m

Width:                6' 2", 1.85 m

Weight:             Approx. 650 lbs, 300 kg

Sail area:         135 Sq. Ft, 12.2 m2

Engine:              4 hp Bernard W110

Send me mail to: pekka.huhta@puuvene.net if you have any comments or if you want to hear news from Manta.

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