Major renovation works completed

After four long years the major renovation works were finally finished during the summer of 2012. What started as "a quick repair of the deadwood" turned into a full  blown renovation including all the primary structures of the yacht from keel up.

First works - finishing the joint in the bilge

The first works were relatively quickly finished. Replacing the deadwood and keel timbers took not much more than originally planned. Unfortunately that was not the end of it. While going through the deck it turned out that there were major spots of rot around the sidestay thru-holes.

Later we found out that also the deck clamps, originally build out of quickly grown spruce, were rotten too. In short that meant the deck had got to go.

The deck removed and replacing the frames

That's when the amount of work started to grow. With the deck removed it was the perfect opportunity to replace the old steamed frames too. With nearly a third of them snapped, not replacing them now would have been the wrong thing to do.

Now, replacing a 122 steamed frames is no small errand. This involved, among other things, the uncovering, removing, replacing and replugging of over 3 000 screws.

Replacing planking at the stern

Once all the frames were replaced, many small things connected to them needed replacing too. Some planks at the stern were soft at spots, a couple of floor timbers were loose and the like. It took another year just to finish all the things turning up.

New deck clamps laminated in place

Before a new deck could be built new deck clamps needed to be installed. In order to attain the same weight-strength ratio of the original structure a laminated deck clamp was the only option.

The tricky thing was that it was mid-winter and to make progress before the spring we needed to make a new deck clamp there and then. Heating a the tent from -20 to +20 centigrade was quite a trick, and a fire-hazard in retrospect, but it could be done with a two-layer tent and industrial heaters. After a sweaty winter weekend we had new deck clamps.

New plywood deck in place

From there started a race to the sea! We made new deck beams from A-class pine and built a new plywood deck to replace the old plywood and teak that had been there when we bought the yacht. We used scarve-joints to connect the plywood sheets and insulated the whole structure with epoxy with no fabric reinforcement. The result was a neat, light-weight deck that really made her look like a racer again.

Router for wider grooves mostly below waterline

After that we impregnated the boat inside and out with linseed oil and thought we'd actually still make it into water that year. Unfortunately not, the planking had dried up over the ten or so years on dry land and no matter how much we tried to wet the boat, the seams needed caulking.

Using a skilsaw to make the narrow grooves above waterline

Now this meant that we had a freshly oiled yacht that needed to be glued, not the optimum alternative. We used a outer and a skilsaw to cut straight grooves along the seams and put it 3-5 mm wedged splines.

To ensure a good glueseam we used acetone to clean the surface and primed the seams with liquid epoxy before inserting the actual spline. Double the work, but no alternatives.

Also the guides for the powertools were nailed to the planking, so after the splining these needed to plugged too.This meant another couple hundred plugs to go with the old ones!

Kisen, just minutes before relaunching

The summer of 2011 we still finished the first coatings of varnish and bottom primer before winter. The winter was used to finish the rigging and trims and during the Spring Kisen got the final layers of varnish and paint.

Finally in June 2012, after four painstakingly long years, she was finally loaded on a truck put to water. The prettiest yacht in the harbour!

The five-point-fives of Gösta Kyntzell, part 1

In 1949, when the GBR-001 "The Deb" was launched in Cowes as the first boat designed according to the 5.5 m rule, Gösta Kyntzell was already an established figure in the Nordic sailing scene. He himself debuted in yacht design in Gothenburg in 1907 with the first boat in his series of Inga-Lill, Little Inga, boats. Inga-Lill I was a Gothenburg Class A (Särklass A) yacht with a sail area of 30 square metres.

FIN-002 Bloss in Naantali (photo Kai Silván)

The first 5.5 m Inga-Lill was numbered XXXVIII and received the sail number FIN-002. Gösta Kyntzell always considered her to be the second 5.5 m in the world. Her sail number was issued just after FIN-001 Gullvinge, but Inga-Lill was launched first already in early 1950. Inga-Lill XXXVIII is build out of pine, different from many later yachts in the same class, which usually had a mahogany planking. She was later sold to Sigurd Nordman and received a new name from her crew Bengt, Lars and Sigurd, thus BLOSS. Bloss also means a flame or glow in Swedish, which goes hand in hand with the bright red paint she bears today.

The next winter after Inga-Lill the Wilenius boatyard in Porvoo built a Kyntzell boat for the yard owners L. Wilenius and E. Friman. FIN-003 Borgå Tippan was launched in 1951 and she fared well in the races that summer, often helmed by Yngve Pacius. Borgå Tippan was soon sold to H. Käcklund (club HSS) and renamed Nitouche and later Pikapuikko (Kalevi Westersund, HSK).

That same summer two Kyntzell yachts were launched outside Porvoo, Nina in Loviisa and Kimmo in Uusikaupunki. FIN-005 Nina was drawn for and built by Ragnar Nordström owner of Suomen Kalastus to be the Finnish challenger for the 1953 Scandinavian Gold Cup held in Hanko, but unfortunately Nina failed in the qualifying races. Nina was raced by Sigurd Nordman under ESF flag around Helsinki in 1955, but not much is known of her since then.

FIN-007 Kimmo was drawn for Niilo Kankare and Unto Koskinen and built by Uudenkaupungin veneveistämö in the west coast of Finland. In 1956 she changed hands to L. Aitokari (SPS) and was renamed Alli.

FIN-008 Ariane in Helsinki (photo Jorma Rautapää)

In 1952, after Nina and Kimmo the Wilenius boatyard continued building new Kyntzell constructions. The first in this series was FIN-008 Ariane IV built for Kari Lampen, Merenkävijät. She later moved to NJK, which at the time hosted the biggest fleet of 5.5’s. In NJK she was owned by the club commodore Birger Krogius and named Flamenco.

Like many other 5.5’s Ariane has received a deckhouse some time during the 1970-1980’s, but she still occasionally races in class races and Viaporin Tuoppi, the biggest wooden boat regatta in Finland. Besides Bloss and Borgå Tippan II, that I will present later, she is one of the few boats of her age still in racing condition today.

References:

Christoffer Ericsson, Skeppsbyggaren Gösta Kyntzell

Wilenius båtvarv, website

5.5 m class measurement certificates

Rannikkoseutu 2.10.2007

Gösta Kyntzell - designer of classics

Gustaf Julius Kyntzell, born in 1882 in Kokkola, grew up to be one of Finland's most renowned boat designer. During his impressively long designer career he designed numerous ships, motor boats and yachts that have an all important place in Finnish maritime history.


Gustaf Julius Kyntzell

Gösta Kyntzell, as he became known, studied in Vaasa, Finland, and Gothenburg, Sweden. Contacts made there were later invaluable as a source of new ideas in yacht building and even resources, when, after the Second World War, Finland was mostly cut off from any foreign suppliers.

Gösta Kyntzell began his professional career in Sweden, but sprung to fame once he moved with his family to Finland. During his career he designed boats and ships for the Russian Navy, while Finland was still a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, as war reparations, the Finnish Coast Guard, the President of Finland and numerous private individuals all around the Baltic Sea.

A brilliant example of Kyntzell's design is the saloon boat AEB, build for August Eklöf, one of Finland's leading industrialists of the time. Today AEB is privately owned, but the the saloon boat "Kultaranta II", build for the President of Finland in 1929 belongs to the collections of the Finnish Maritime Museum in Kotka.


Saloon boat AEB, designed by Gösta Kyntzell (photo Jorma Rautapää)

In yachting Gösta Kyntzell is best known for his extensive series of racing yachts called Inga-Lill ("Little-Inga" in Swedish). He build the boats for himself and typically sailed them only for one season and then sold them onwards. This cycle of build, try and rebuild provided Gösta Kyntzell with an excellent opportunity to learn about the effects of changes in design, and probably gave him an intuitive edge over other designers, who did not sail their own designs in such an extent.

The first boat in the Inga-Lill series was a 30 square metre, special class A (Särklass A) yacht, build in 1907 in Arvika boatyard, Sweden. The last yacht in the series was an Internation 5.5 m class yacht Inga-Lill XXXXIIII, which represented Finland in the 1960 Rome Olympics.

All in all the Inga-Lill series included many different classes of boats from Skerry Cruisers to Metre Class yachts. At least two of the boats have also represented Finland in the Scandinavian Gold Cup races - the Six Metre Class yacht Inga-Lill XXVI in 1937 in Long Island Sound against US-81 Goose and the Five Point Five Inga-Lill XXXXIIII in 1960 in Marstrand against SWE-28 Wasa and in 1961 in Helsinki against SWE-33 Nowa.

History of Kisen

Kisen was built in 1954, just two years after Complex II had won the Olympics in Helsinki, for Ingmar Nylund a Finnish engineer and merchant. Kisen was not Nylund's first yacht, he had previously owned at least an 8 mR, a 6 mR (FIN-44 Toy) and another 5.5 m, Vistra (FIN-9, nowadays Vis-a-vis). Kisen, which was numbered FIN-15, was apparently named after Nylund's wife's nickname.


Complex II leading the fleet in the 1952 Summer Olympics (Olympiakuva / Wikimedia)

Wilenius båtvarv, the boatyard that built Kisen, was no beginner in making racing yachts, and together with Gösta Kyntzell, Kisen's designer, they where responsible for lauching a formidable part of Finland's classic 5.5 m fleet.

Gösta Kyntzell earned his living drawing ships, motorboats and yachts for companies, private individuals and the Finnish government and he was one of the most productive maritime architects in Finland ever. Unfortunately by the time Kisen was designed, the 5.5 m fleet was still very young and mostly followed concepts proven in other yacht classes. As such, Kisen is very classic in design, a fantastically well finished boat, but not outright astounding as a 5.5 m.

During her early years Kisen competed actively in the west coast of Sweden in Öresund, Sandhamn and Marstrand and at least during the season of 1955 the boat participated in a number of races in Finland as well. Typically Kisen showed up in races organized by NJK, Nylund's home club, and finished well after Pohjantähti II, skippered by Johan Gullichsen, and Teresita, skippered by Peter Fazer. Kisen's records are more in the same range as Bloss and Ariane IV, boats build much before itself.

In 1962 Ingmar Nylund sold Kisen to somebody in HSS and the boat has since passed through relatively few hands to us. We are still tracking the details of Kisen's ownership history, so any news are more than welcome.

Renovating a Classic 5.5 m

As anybody will probably tell you, renovating a classic sail yacht is not too simple a task. The good thing is, not everybody believes half a word they are told. This is exactly how we got into renovating a classic 5.5 m.

According to an initial review of the boat's condition we planned to get by with replacing the deadwood and keelson, keel timbers, keel bolts, garboards and one or two of the planks above the garboards and some local reparation of sheer clamps plus a final sanding and varnish. This appeared like a reasonable amount of work for one winter and we'd be able to get the boat in water for the next season.

The sheer clamp and one of the knees on the starboard side

Since then the scale of works has spread like wildfire. The sheer clamps were found to be mostly decomposed, a majority of the frames had fractures and sections of the stern were rotten. Furthermore, in order to replace the frames it was necessary to remove the deck.

New keel timbers in place

So far we have done most of the work that was initially planned. The deadwood and the keelson have been rebuilt and new keel timbers are installed. At the moment the boat is stripped to merely a hull and we are in the process of replacing the frames. Most of the frames (114 to be precise) are going to be steamed the remaining eight laminated.

Fresh ash-wood frames ready for steaming

Once all the frames have been replaced the hull will once again hold its own weight and work can proceed to local reparations in the stern, planking and rebuilding the deck. It is hoped that the sheer clamp would be ready by the end of this year. This would allow the deck to be ready by early spring, at which time the weather would already allow finishing works such as impregnation, painting and varnishing.

Eero removing five decades of varnish

Unfortunately the Finnish winter is cold, dark and long, which limits the opportunities for working outside. For a fair portion of the year, the sun sets around four in the afternoon. As a result, during the current season work is limited to weekends. But we are four involved in the projects and it's rightout amazing how much four motivated pairs of hands can get done in one day.

By the way, have a look at DIY Wood Boat, they feature first class illustrations of the parts of boats, at least for me this was mostly all new vocabulary.

International 5.5 m class yacht FIN-15 Kisen

According to our visitor statistics we seem to have quite a number of international guests visiting our site and unfortunately there has been really little information so far on this site for anyone not fluent in Finnish. No big changes on this subject can be expected, as we barely handle the jargon in Finnish, let alone in English, so we will probably stick to writing mostly in our mother tongue. All the same, we will try to provide you with at least some content as we are, sure enough, flattered by your interest in Kisen! :)

From now on (August 2009) all English language postings will be tagged with the word "international" so you can always click on this tag to have only English language content. Alternatively you can simply navigate to this page, in the end, both do the same thing. As always, we are happy to answer any questions. You'll find the e-mail address in the navigation bar on the right.

Briefly about Kisen. Kisen is an international 5.5 m class yacht built in 1954 designed by Gösta Kyntzell and built by the Wilenius boatyard in Porvoo (Borgå in Swedish), Finland. The boat has been out of water since about 2004 and is currently under thorough renovation. More about the work done and planned later.