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The original Juni was built about 1935 and resembled the Swedish
Starboat, a design that was adopted here with the addition of a counter for the
Loch Long. She proved to be very fast and seaworthy for her size with the
result that numerous copies followed, some in carvel mahogany and some clinker
planked in oak. They were taken up by boat-building schools as a conveniently
small project, so that the design was used to teach building skills, resulting
in a boat which teaches sailing. My Juni was built in 1973 to the order of
Sonja Herlin, Tore’s daughter, to replace the original boat after she was
destroyed in a fire.
I didn’t know all this when I first saw Juni looking rather
dejected in a garden in Dalaro. It was obvious that she needed a lot of work,
but the quality of her original build shone through, crying out for
restoration.
The story of her return to Scotland is told in one of the earliest posts here.
Only once she was safely here in Argyll was it possible to remove the furniture
and floorboards to get a proper look at what needed to be done. This also gave
me a proper understanding of the quality of the work done by the Storrebro
School. The hull is of close-seam construction, that is to say there is no
caulking or stopping between the planks. She has swept decks in teak, also a
masterwork in small scale. Varnished mahogany topsides meant that any mistakes
would be highly visible. The project was going to be more challenging than one
on a larger scale.
Any restoration will take a lot of time and throw up
problems that have not been met with before. A good way to proceed is to start
with the routine but time-consuming jobs, removing old paint and varnish and so
on, while researching the more difficult and novel tasks. The former work will
have to be done anyway and the time involved mindlessly scraping and sanding
gives one plenty of time to think and plan.
I won’t bore the reader with all the details of what was
done. The topsides, spars and internal furniture were all stripped down, to be
refinished with oil and traditional varnish, the work producing plenty of
thinking time. The difficult work involved dealing with two major structural
cracks in the hull planking, combined with numerous associated broken frames. I
was a bit worried in case this damage had occurred through normal sailing but
it seemed more likely to have happened on shore, as Swedish clubs usually
operate their own storage facilities and accidents do happen. Subsequently some
discreet enquiries suggested that this was probably the cause, which was
reassuring.
Juni was relaunched in June 2013 and there followed a couple
of weeks of anxious pumping while she took up after about ten years ashore. She
has proved to be a lively little seaboat, behaving in some ways like a much
larger yacht but also very fast and responsive. She’ll be ideal for day-sailing
around the sheltered sea-lochs of mid-Argyll.
The above is from the 2013 RHYC Journal, for those who aren't members.
The above is from the 2013 RHYC Journal, for those who aren't members.
