In the spring of 1998 my wife and I acquired, after fifteen years with a wooden folk boat, a well-kept OE 32 (possibly number 140 according to enquiries made by club chairman Biörn). The boat was built some time during 1981–82. According to the former owner, it was built by a shipyard, though on closer inspection, I doubt that. She is, in any case, well built and has a very beautiful, well maintained matt varnished teak interior that had been refreshed just before bought her.

In this account, I will share with you some of the experiences we have had so far and describe the changes that we thought were appropriate. You should note that I am not a boat builder. I am neither a specialist nor especially trained in boat mechanics, but I am a reasonably handy technician with some sense of symmetry.

Replenishing the teak
During the previous owner’s time, around ten years ago, the boat had been supplemented with teak on the deck, couch house and in the cockpit. We haven’t had any problem with leakage even though some of the plugs had to be replaced and some seams could probably be improved.

In addition to the teak added on the deck and couch house, there were two solar panels set in on top of the main hatch housing. These were the flexible type of panel that followed the housing’s curves. Unfortunately, one was hit by water leakage with the accompanying interruptions, and the production of that particular type of panel had ceased. A panel of the same size was available, but built in on a fixed frame, which is why I was forced to do a new teak construction for it. The whole thing went well and today once more, we have 50 W compensating charging for the battery consumption.

The freshened up interior
Under deck they had, at the same time, changed the old matting on the side of the hull and a ceiling of horizontal teak strips – beautiful and attractive. The side of the hull is quite visible with the special sofa construction. We don’t know if the sofa’s back support was changed at this time. They did not however have wall to wall covering nor were they foldable, which seems to be the most usual solution. Instead, it is composed of detachable “boards” or rather box type designs (for weight reasons), each about 25cm (10in) high and supplied with 5cm (2in) of thick upholstery that is fixed in place with Velcro. If you wish to have sea berths, you lift out the back support from its sockets, turn them and place them in their alternative holder closer to the centre of the boat. The arrangement gives the cabin a much airier impression, though it is possible that the seating comfort has been slightly affected.

Windscreen
When we inspected the boat before buying it, we reacted when we saw it was fitted with a windscreen, and made some comment about it that ”we could of course always remove it”. The seller countered that we should ”wait and see, you’ll quickly be addicted”. It takes ten minutes to get addicted! We are super happy with the windscreen, as we are with the other hatches and port lights fitted with real glass and supplied by the manufacturer N.C. Bjerg. The windscreen’s plane mid section can be opened, which sounds unnecessary, but is something that we make use of now and then during our warm summer. The spray hood is naturally attached to the windscreen’s upper edge. We almost never lower it, as one doesn’t gain any visibility height. During sailing one looks mostly through the pane, which gives an excellent view compared to a usual spray hood with plastic panes. My wife Cajsa has incidentally hand sewn a new spray hood using as a guide the old one which we took apart. It won’t work, said the hood manufacturer, but there he was mistaken.

The fore cabin hatch back-to-front
The fore cabin hatch was made with the opening backwards, which on further thought appeared weak, the locking device felt wrong with regards to breaking seas. I quite simply lifted this and turned it 180 degrees. The fit was excellent, and only a few screws need to change place.

The hatch is from the above mentioned manufacturer N.C. Bjerg and has a weak lock. These sit with 2–3 mm screw through the glass and has a special domed nut supplied with an underlaying rubber packing. We have had some problem with water leakage through this packing, and we are thinking from time to time about the possibility of changing the lock to another product. Has anyone had a similar experience?

Midship’s mooring post
In order to easily organise spring etc. I have assembled a mooring post midship. I have used a model with two through bolts. The mooring posts sit on the teak toe rail and the bolts, which are drawn from below come out suitably in the cupboard above the berths on each side.

The refrigerator ‘s bad insulation
The coolbox which sits aft of the stove is made of stainless steel and insulated with foam. The cooling unit is the brand ”Kompaktkühler” and was fitted under the galley sink, i.e. in the same space as the box. I am certain that at one time the unit had been a good one. Among other things it was provided with a change over switch and its own cord for 220V AC-supply in addition to the usual 12V DC-supply. However it was past it’s best, was very noisy, was warm and functioned badly.

I began by adding additional insulation to the outside of the cool box, using 5cm (2in) insulation fibreboard from the outside of the bulkhead in the cockpit stowage box. The year after, I lifted out that old unit, after some drudgery, and was better able to study the box and its insulation. I saw that they had omitted to insulate the whole under side of the box. Together with all of the warmth emitted from the unit the result couldn’t be anything else than a catastrophe. The new unit is a Coolmatic and is assembled in the cockpit locker on a shelf which is fixed with a bracket to the bulkhead towards the cabin. The shelf is about 10cm (4in) from the floor plate in order that one can easily lift it. Now we have cold beer!

Shore power plant
Both Sweden and Denmark are well supplied with harbours and the numbers of permanent power points increases with the sailor’s rising need for comfort. Originally, the boat’s electrical system was provided by only a starter battery and a consumption battery. This was mostly OK with some hesitations, especially with that old refrigerator. We have now installed an additional 75 Ah supplying capacity and a shore power plant with an earth fault breaker, and also automatic circuit breakers a Mobitronic charging unit and a 230V outlet. I have placed the outlet in the anchor box and the rest of the apparatus under the front edge of the quarter berth, safe and completely out of the way. A real boost! The 230V-outlet is really well suited for our “sailing along” vacuum cleaner, ”Volfy” that is easily stowed under the port sofa.

LPG automatic
The LPG cylinders (2xP6) lie in the sternmost cockpit locker. In wet weather it can of course happen that one is lazy enough to neglect safety by not turning the gas off when you have finished cooking. For that reason I installed a magnetic valve in the same space to shut off the gas. I installed the control panel for it on the bulkhead above the stove, beside the control panel to the refrigerator, and now we never neglect to shut it off. Recommended.

Completing the instruments etc..
The accompanying electronic devices were, in principle, adequate but had their shortcomings. The Decca Navigator System departed this life and was replaced by a stationary Garmin 128, installed by the navigation table. The old VHF-machine liked, for some unknown reason, only certain channels and had to make way for a new Icom.

The Echo Depth Sounder, (an old VDO-brand) didn’t work, according to the seller, but I came across an ingeniously placed fuse and the device got a new life after I replaced the fuse. I had planned to change it, but hesitated about a drilling new hole in the hull. Also, for the most part, we probably will get the right information from the old one.

We have also occasionally been looking askance at the speed log also manufactured by VDO, with the electrical variation whose meter goes the right direction. The problem is that the propeller has a tendency accumulate a lot of growth, especially around autumn. One year it looked like at coconut. A slightly trained conscience and access to a few drops of “strong stuff”, has kept it clean over the last years. The radio, i.e. an ordinary car stereo, was changed a couple of years ago for a new one with RDS, cd-player and remote control! With only two wires one can transfer all one’s desires about the morning weather, other programs, raise the volume etc. A nice long cable even reaches up to the cockpit. Recommended! The device is a Sony brand, costing less than 1 500 SEK (165 EUR) and for a remote control it is a mere 300 SEK (32 EUR).

New winches
The boat’s basic equipment included four Andersen sheet winches, size 46. Because of the windscreen we could only use a relatively short winch handle. On account of this or because of an increasing weakness accompanying the ageing process, we took advantage of Hjertman’s Christmas sale and procured two Andersen 40ST, i.e. self tailing winches. These are, of course, a slightly smaller size than the existing ones (40 instead of 46) but all the advice from the supplier, personal beliefs and through the catalogue’s recommendation table has convinced me that they are a great choice. In addition, the screw holes correspond exactly between the standard 46 and the 40ST. The proportion of them is alike, 40 ST is somewhat wider in the base and about 3 cm (about 1in) higher, which means that in the future, we will be able to use a longer handle. Does anyone have a viewpoint about this? I shall tell about our experiences in a later chronicle.

Future projects
Next on our wish-list is a cutter stay to complement the furling genua. The furling genua together with the full battened main sail and lazy-jacks makes a convenient rig, but it is not so effective in hard beating, and the possibility of setting a proper working jib or in the worst case a storm jib is missing. I am still here waiting for some good advice from the readers

No super solutions
Nothing in the above writing is in any way unique, it is well-known by all and easy to achieve. Many boat owners have done the same things our way or, more likely, in a better way. Through these writings I hope I may be able to inspire someone to start a small project. Naturally, it would be really cool to hear how others set about solving corresponding problems, or answer some of my questions.

Also see the article From a small wooden boat to a lare plastic tub.

Lars Ljung