Act 1: Dinghy cruiser "Betty Blue" comes to Lake Tegernsee
Curtain up, this three-act play opens with an opulent backdrop. Tegernsee waves gurgle on the bank of the Konzertgraben. On the other side of the lake, the village of Rottach-Egern emerges from the haze. The Wallberg rises a thousand metres above. A Bavarian sky of white-blue plucked clouds closes off the stage prospectus at the top. Sports and film stars live offstage. A member of the national football team once commented on the World Cup for television from the terrace of the yacht club; he could have easily reached the set on foot. The celebrities drive the rates on this inland riviera to Wallberg levels. The boat in question cost as much as a square metre of lakefront property - two and a half thousand euros.
Maximilian Kolb, 48, bought the dinghy cruiser in winter. At last. He had been looking for a small boat to spend time with his growing family, for trips with friends, for his buoyage and for little money. A few cosmetic repairs that are due in the lower price bracket are familiar, okay. As a product designer, he paints and welds, saws and mills, sands and polishes quite well. What could possibly go wrong with such a tried and tested and simple boat.
First sailing season also unique due to pandemic
While it was still snowing, he fetched the 15-person dinghy cruiser "Betty Blue" from Leipzig. What followed was a carefree summer on the beguiling, almost dramatically beautiful lake stage, the first act of his ownership, which at times developed into a drama. "Here, on this postcard, every stroke is a sailing day, and all those who sailed with us that first summer have signed their names", 48 strokes and another 45 names can be seen there. "That was 2020 and the first Corona spring. Harbour cranes remained cordoned off, but we launched our new second-hand boat over the beach and were the only sailors on Lake Tegernsee for weeks, crazy."
In addition to the expected repairs and a thorough cleaning, the boat is given a second-hand mainsail, purchased via an ad portal. A genoa from the attic is suitable as a new headsail. Max, as he has always been called, sailed regattas as a teenager with the challenging two-man trapeze dinghy Flying Dutchman. Jolli is now a member of the family, a harmonious extra in the Bergsee theatre, smart, as they say there, but not too brash, a dream cast. Applause, end of the first act.
"But when I was launching the boat, I realised it was heavier", and it smelled of vinegar. "The acidic broth sprayed out of the bubbles in the paintwork. I'd never heard of osmosis before." He got himself a specialist book and quotes for remediation. "14,000 euros, I had no choice but to dry the boat first, read up on the subject and then attempt the refit myself."
Act 2: Refit of the dinghy cruiser
Curtain up, Max's workshop, place of the front. A pin-up calendar, several electric manual machines, cold lights, sorting boxes on shelves behind tarpaulins. Under the ceiling is an Arabian dhow, a memento of several years of work in Dubai, the maladjusted "Betty Blue" upside down on trestles in the centre. Max: "I didn't even understand the physics of what happens to a boat like that." The neat dinghy cruiser "Betty Blue", designed by Berlin-based Manfred Ernst and launched in 1971 at the Eikboom shipyard in Rostock, is now laid up. A GDR duo that stood for success and became internationally recognised. However, Ernst primarily designed around 80 per cent of East German sports boats, motor and sailing yachts.
"I first wrapped the boat in a plastic cover for five months and connected a powerful dehumidifier, actually for building a house. I went to the shed every two days to tip out the water I had collected." Now dry, all the sore areas are revealed. The entire underwater hull is obviously missing gelcoat, the previous owners or the previous owners had not been so meticulous during a refit. Or were not so meticulous. The four, sometimes five layers of glass fibres now lie in front of him as if they had been removed. Because the fibres are still matted even without resin, there is still some nasty work to do. Max simply cannot separate the layers from each other.
"I started sanding, first with the rotary sander with 40-grit paper, completely hopeless." Max documents his progress and failures in often cheerful little films that he posts online. "I always took my time to make the videos, I made it as nice as possible so I wouldn't get angry," says the 48-year-old. But the cheerfulness is deceptive.
"Betty Blue" is more affected than expected
The three stringers, hollow reinforcements from the bow to the stern, the size of roof battens, are also filled with foul-smelling slop. And the synthetic foam in the buoyancy tanks has acted as a sponge over the years. Max cut and removed the wet crumbs like wisdom teeth through the inspection openings. Then there are still the glass layers of the entire fuselage to separate. The boat parried most tips on stripping from instructions on the internet with a resistance that was as unexpected as it was tenacious. "Sometimes I removed the layers with a pneumatic drill bit," recalls the troubled owner.
But finally the last layer is exposed. The beginning of the sailing season is already peeking through the workshop windows, which hurts, but the sun at least brings enough warmth into the hall. His boat is a fragile breath at this moment, "it was now as delicate and sensitive as paper, and it was time to start building it up".
Difficult interventions, good end
Max works on Friday off. Originally planned as family time, it is now "Betty" day. He orders mats, vinyl ester, epoxy, peel ply, a slow-reacting hardener and levelling compound. "The calculation for this was another two and a half thousand euros, so not that much, but you still have the time pressure due to the durability of the resin." He was familiar with resin work from repairing a racing rowing boat, which he likes to drive across the lake in calm conditions. "But then you have a lot of time pressure with a whole hull that you want to laminate wet on wet."
For the upcoming weeks of laminating, he lays out a hundred square metres of cut mats and stirs such a large quantity of resin and hardener for the first time. He had previously tried to obtain laminating plans. "I just looked in the Berlin area phone book and found the son of the designer Manfred Ernst," but he didn't have the documents to hand. "Then I called the Eikboom shipyard and they were actually able to put me in touch with a laminator from back then. He dictated the ply structure to me over the phone and I wrote it down."
Surface specialist Kolb models the underwater hull
Soon the first layer is glued, "and I had to work very much on schedule, otherwise you're left with a boiling and already reacting bucket of resin". He works his way from the front to the back, then back to the front again, until five layers stick together wet on wet. He is tired, despite wearing a protective mask from the resin vapour, but also happy. "Hey, this could be something," he thinks. "Now the dinghy cruiser looks like the boat I once bought."
He compares the subsequent smoothing process to spreading cake batter. He applies a total of 30 kilos of filler to the hull six times and sands most of it down again. Sanding, smoothing, sanding - the Friday task remains rather monotonous for weeks on end. "But as a surface specialist, I naturally had some expectations."
His strategy of always buying rather expensive, high-quality machines and selling them again once the work was done paid off in this work step too. "I bought a so-called Flexisander, quite expensive and very effective" - similar to a mobile, the sanding block, which is bent over 14 joints, moulds itself to the shape of the hull. And then a cheap machine finds its way into his machine park. "This mini belt sander from the discounter was the only one with a roller diameter that fitted into the curve between the hull and the rubbing strake." After one lap around the boat, however, the little helper is shipwrecked. "I sanded the last metre by hand, I had such upper arms anyway," he forms melons with his hands.
Slowing down just before the finish line
But the hull now looks better than before, and the paintwork could conjure up the surface of a polished chestnut. But one final ordeal still awaits: "The super-expensive epoxy barrier coat didn't flow at all when it was rolled on." By applying the viscous compound, Max devalued the perfect surface in a single pass; it now resembles the relief of the main Alpine ridge. "And all the bumps became rock-hard. I then miserably removed the expensive craters with the coarsest sandpaper, everything had to come off again."
Seeking help, he contacted the paint manufacturer two weeks later - no, they couldn't explain it either. "In the end, the problem did bother a specialist there, and he turned up at my place. We were at least able to reproduce the fault." It turns out that the paint is adjusted to spray guns, and only flows with additional solvent. Max then got a thicker coat with the challenges, "and I changed the rollers from long pile to short pile". He remained in contact with the colour specialist. "He and I are also happy with the current surface."
Act 3: the freestyle in the refit of "Betty Blue"
Curtain, last lift. In front, Gut Kaltenbrunn, a splendid farm with a beer garden with a view, brown and white spotted cattle graze on the pasture facing the lake. Max is back on the road with his "Betty Blue" in the third act, regally. The product designer used the months leading up to the relaunch in 2022 as an afterthought, for the renovation of the centreboard, centreboard box, rudder, the newly set waterline and finally the protective coating against organisms on the underwater hull.
Time, finally, for the much-loved detailed handicrafts. "I'm fascinated by the functional, simple solution, preferably made of wood or somehow black." As a result, the boat is not only more splendid in substance, but also in the little things. For example, the eyelets for the riding straps in the cabin bulkhead are chain ring bolts from the bicycle workshop. He preserves the salvageable. The jib stretcher, a black so-called beer crate stretcher, is taken from the Flying Dutchman and placed on the mast. The jib furler made of Pertinax, an early composite material made of resin and paper, is retained as it rolls. He polishes the stainless steel spreader fitting, reinforces the arms and refits it.
Parent taxi with style
Final applause, what a crispy, fine, individual dinghy cruiser, bobbing there at the buoy! With a small system error. The hull shines so immaculately, a swan pecks at its reflection, possibly fighting a rival. Max watches the turf war anxiously through his binoculars. "Really, I couldn't see what it costs to kill a wild animal." My dear swan, he rolls his eyes. "I polished the scratches out in the winter, and luckily the swan has had a girlfriend since this summer, which seems to have calmed him down."
Max clocked up two hundred and fifty hours for the work on the boat built in 1971. He practically renovated the foundations of an existing house without demolishing it. After taking two months of parental leave, he worked full-time in his small shipyard after the family council was convened so that a family boat would be ready again. He kept his Friday off.
The plan: to pick his son up from school by boat, two and a half nautical miles away. There is actually a short mooring at the schoolyard, "but it has only worked three times". The rich and beautiful live next to the school by the lake. Max's parent taxi, however, is the richest in terms of grace, character and temperament.
Technical data of the "Betty Blue"
- Designer: Manfred Ernst
- Shipyard: Eikboom/Rostock
- Material: GRP
- Torso length: 6,50 m
- Width: 2,30 m
- Draught 0.20-1.60 m
- Weight 0.50 t
- Mainsail 9.45 m²
- Genoa 5.40 m²
