Johannan haku
Finland – Sweden 2 – 1 how Mira was changed to Johanna
When family’s head count grew by three, I stared to think about a bigger boat. The starting point was Mira’s measurements: length 9,30m and width 2,20m. Those measurements were easy to enlarge, but when also a decission to have wood as material, the offering got quite small. That was why I started to study also the swedish market, where the price level was approx 30% cheaper and the condition generally good. The length was easy to grow, there was at least one spceial class A which length was 10,50m, few skerry cruisers with lengths over 11m and at least one big Scylla, length 9,60m and numerous other in Finland and Sweden. When demand was also strongly built yacht, it dropped at least the A and all the skerry cruisers away. They would have dropped any way, since one additional demand was to sail from Hanko to Hiittinen in approx 10m/s close hauled without water on the deck.
So the only one left was Scylla. Unfortunately it does not point to wind to well, so it was dropped as well. So the remaining choices left was H and Ö classes. The H I am referring to is a sea cruiser and very similiar to Ö yachts, not the H-boat which also excist. Big help was Svenska Kryssarklubben year book from 1989, where the boat index included also their measurements. So it was time to start to use modern technology and study the swedish market a bit deeper.
I surfed the web and the boats for sales sites. When I found Sail Yacht Society’s web pages things got a lot clearer. The pages included a large number of mainly swedish wooden sail boats, approx 100. It included “for sale” page which I started to visit randomly and more or less frequently. Finally in the beginning of summer -98 I saw that Ö10, Johanna was for sale. The looks were not of a traditional Ö, the hull looked higher and sturdier. My interest got a lot bigger when I read the specs: length 10,50 m, width 2,80 m, depth 1,96 m, displacement 9000 kg, sail area of 50 m2 and diesel engine of 37 hp. When a job related trip to Sweden came to the picture, I decided to have a look.
Johanna was in Dalarö, which was approx half an hour drive from Stockholm to the south. I drove there with a car I borrowed from my swedish colleague. His hand trembled a little bit since the car was brand new – he told me to take it easy, since the car was only few days old so please drive carefully…What, me? you think I am a crazy finnish rally driver? No way!
When I got to Dalarö boat harbour, I noticed easily the tallest mast in the harbour and it was wooden. Anyway, I started to look for the boat, and surprise, surprise, I found myself by that same tall wooden mast and looked at Johanna. Tom asked to come onboard. Johanna was somehow more like a ship than a boat and it hooked me. Johanna had a small doghouse so the deck was quite large which would be suitable for a dinghy. ( I was planning to build one……). The length was used very efficiently, the stern deck was only 30 cm long. The hull was mahogany on steel and oak frames and was quite heavily built, that’s why it had coped well on winds of 25 m/s. However the previous owner had lost the mast and had to build a new one. I chatted with Tom and documented the ship and promised to let him know my thoughts within next few weeks.
Autumn came. Mira was hauld out to Sommarö boat yard to wait for redecking and I had mixed feelings about buying Johanna. The problem was, that I did not want to end up with two boats. That meant, that Mira had to be involved on the buying of Johanna. Tom agreed on this, came to Finland in december to look at it and we – my wife and me – travelled to Sweden to look at Johanna. Things started to clear out, and we signed the papers in early spring. After this I started to work on Mira’s deck to wchich new canvas arrived from Scotland (thru Farsons).
Approx 20 m canvas., 500 g of small copper nails and 5L of deck paint did not end on the deck as soon as I had planned. The most time consuming job was to remove the old nails, and smoothen the deck under the canvas. I also gave up to only hand sand the hull. I bought a random-orbital sanding machine which made sanding the hull almost a pleasure. Spring was quite chilly so the seams did not open and Mira was launched as “almost-ready” on the 7th of june.
The changing of the boats was decided to take place in Maarianhamina early june. The schedule was readjusted approx two weeks forward so myself, A.Aimo and his son sailed Mira to Maarianhamina in five days. We had a habit of taking a small shot of “jaloviina” – a kind of a finnish brandy – every 10 nautical miles.
We found ourselves in Maarianhamina on the 18. of june. We had few days off because we had to wait for JaTu who had promised to join to the sailing home. We played minigolf, visited the nautical museum and ate well. on the 20th of june we swapped the boats and started to move our stuff from Mira to Johanna.
It took few more days before we could set sail back home due to heavy southerly wind they had promised. The first leg was from Maarianhamina to to Korpöström. During our second sailing day SMS started to fill the ether when s/y Lumikki was asking our position. We decided to meet and so we found ourselves in the archipelago of Hiittinen with s/y Lumikki and s/y Alien. From the evening thru the night to the early morning we made world a lot better place to live. We were forced to go to sleep when we ran out of refreshments .
Next morning we left our harbour quite fast since the wind had turned to not so favourable direction and also growing. We landed to Hanko just before a thunderstorm and had excellent pizzas called Hangover’s and few beers in Classic Pizzeria.
From Hanko we set sail to Inkoo, were we were in the evening. The sea level was +-0 so we should be able to get in to the harbour. The harbour of Inkoo is 2 m deep, and Johanna’s depth is about the same.Safe and sound back home!
After few days we had a nice midsummer sailing and later in july a three week sailing in the finnish archipelago and a visit Muumimaailma and in august the wooden boat sailing reagatta called Viaporin Tuoppi.
hh
