The IF incurred a number of minor design changes during its production run. Later boats featured a Scandinavian style bow pulpit with a lowered seat section. Earlier boats, such as Grendel, had mooring cleats that consisted of a large wooden dowel running horizontally through two steel pedestals. Earlier boats also had wooden handrails on the cabin trunk. On later boats, the mooring cleats and handrails were all steel.

In addition to changing the name, I have tinkered with Grendel by adding unnecessary toys such as an Autohelm and a Navik windvane. The most useful feature that I added was the dodger. The original dodger and frame were not onboard when I bought her. I’m afraid that the new dodger is a tad too high. The boom rests against it when sheeted in hard.

The Autohelm is much more convenient to use, but I rarely use it, except when motoring, because of my paranoia concerning running the battery down and not being able to start the engine.

Grendel features a Volvo MD1 diesel engine. The engine still runs smoothly which is amazing considering that it has been rusting in the bilge for a quarter of a century. It has let me down on a few occasions. Twice, an improperly installed oil filter allowed the motor oil to leak into the bilge. (When removing the oil filter, make sure that the gasket does not remain stuck to the engine.) The worst calamity was when the engine blew a head gasket. I think the problem might have occurred due to the exhaust backing up with water and allowing water to flow back through the valves into the combustion chamber. On trying to start, the water hammer effect blasted through the gasket. Replacing the gasket was an expensive repair, but a lesser engine might have broken a piston rod or a crankshaft. I have since installed a Vetus siphon break in the exhaust line that, I hope, will prevent a similar problem from recurring. Another recent repair involved replacing the exhaust system that had corroded through. The replacement system was made up of standard plumbing parts except for the adapter fitting which attaches directly to the engine block. That part was still available through Volvo.

The Volvo is equipped with a hand-crank starter. I have never been able to get the engine started this way. Even when using two people, one to operate the crank and the other to operate the decompression valve, I have not been successful with the hand-crank starter. A few years ago, there appeared a stream of letters in Latitude 38 regarding the hand-crank starting of diesel engines. The Volvo owners were unanimous in that their engines could not be hand-crank started.

Bill Rickman (bilrick@yahoo.com), owner of the wooden Sea Bird yawl, "Biscuit", has e-mailed me that he is able to hand-crank start his 2 cylinder Volvo diesel using the following procedure:

I have not yet been able to duplicate Bill's success on Grendel, but I'll continue trying.

Even out of the water, the folkboat hull has beautiful lines. The long keel with attached rudder and well protected propeller aperture can be a major advantage on the Chesapeake Bay. The keel sheds crab pot warps readily.

At one time, I lived along the bank of the James River in Isle of Wight County, Virginia. For a brief time, I had a mooring buoy set on two 60# Danforth anchors, each on 100’ of chain. The anchors were oriented along the direction of the tidal stream with the mooring buoy between them. The James at that point was approximately 5 miles wide. It was too rough during severe weather to keep a boat on a mooring, so I only used the mooring during occasional summer weekends. 

The mooring survived one hard winter during which substantial ice floes formed on the river. During the spring, the mooring buoy disappeared. It probably was the victim of fatigue in the toggle connecting the chains or it just may have been smacked good by a passing boat. I dragged a hook to try to retrieve the anchors, but never found them.

In the spring of 2001, after 9 years of ownership, I faced the hard reality that I no longer had the necessary time available for sailing and maintaining a boat. I had a new wife who was prone to seasickness and a new house with a big yard to maintain. So, I sold Grendel. Grendel now has a new home in the Annapolis area.