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Ok, your own wooden schooner…. Oh yes, this was a stunning period; in the end, it took us 6 years to reach an acceptable budget to start with…. But after Being Lost forever, it was money-making time ! For this, we started an exhibition building company and bought a hammer, cordless drill, some handtools and banged the bongo´s like a chimpanzee !! 7 days a week, 18 hours a day… our hammers almost melted. Our dream kept us stretching the limits and working was a pleasure, the more the better ! Two years we went on building stands all over Europe; I don´t know how many of ten thousands of hours. But we realized that buying our own schooner was far out of our league; we would be old and stiff by then, if even still alive…. Taxes, costs, overhead and etcetera´s where far more than expected and we had to change course: we would need to build her ourself, simple !
Simple ?? How ??
We never built a boat before, what kind of wood, design & drawings and some God knows what else you need…. Because of earlier travels, we decided for Brazil: nice country, exceptional wood and if we could find a suitable shipyard somewhere, it even could fit óúr budget ! In the spirit of number 14; keep on hammering and learn what to do. We would visit the Batavia shipyard, go to other sites were traditional wooden boats where being built, went to TU in Delft to find the proper Tropical wood species and along the way, we found an architect Olivier van Meer willing to the famous cost-price design and calcs – he even would print the ribs one-to-one for us to take along ! Good, things started moving !!
We kept on trying to melt hammers and on the side, we started a little construction company to earn a bit more. Went working in the bar and we even welded the historical piggy bank: a steel plate box with a iny-tiny slot to just fit a very well folded note. For cash money on the side and for all friends going to the bars in the neighborhood, dropping by for a warm-up beer. Leaving they could “pay” for their beer, knowing that it would be for the boat and some “expensive beers they were”, haha ! All hands on deck for the boat, oh Gloria !!
In the meantime, we also tried to learn Portuguese… A short course at the Tropical Institute in Amsterdam for the basics but we couldn´t spend too much on it. The rest we did ourselves and had A3 papers hanging on all the walls in the apartment with verbs and words, changing out when mastered. The hard ones, they would hang on the toilet; the morning visits had never been so efficient, haha ! We lived all together to save money on rent and like this it was a perfect way to learn I tell you, and fast !
Bit by bit, the pieces where are falling together. Every time we became more enthusiast and the fun factor was very high ! We seemed to get the spirit going and more important, to keep it going: 6 years is awfully long to wait for something….
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