h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Do they do this in green?
Because I'm green with envy. Couldn't face the hours with the plywood, splinters behind the fingernails swearing and general heart ache that is boat building. My mate has been rebuilding a 36 foot yacht on the Solent for the last 10 years and the farthest he's been is from the Isle of Wight to Chichester harbour when he was ferrying it home after buying it.
No I'm jealous of being in the Canaries in decent temperatures and hopefully decent mooring fees.
Me? I'm an armchair sailor. I've got all the shore qualifications up to Coastal Skipper but no practicals as my mate never sails for more than a day, and I now can't afford a commercial course,as I'm now on the dole tho' looking to get a TEFL qualification and go abroad for a bit.
Tell me more and make me greener.
[email protected]

Hello Bean! By a coincidence it was another never-ending-project that triggered us into building Pilgrim.

In a Bureaucracy-style sequence of disasters/frustrations (divorce, new jobs, moving twice, the job then moving to Germany, you name it)I found myself living in Haag-am-der-Amper and reporting to work in Freising near Munich.

However, I was very lucky in my neighbours, with a fine collection of interesting enthusiastic lunatics and an excellent landlady and landlord who lived in the mansion next to the apartment block which in turn was attached to their light industrial unit where some of my neighbours worked. Very Bavarian.

One side of the courtyard featured an enormous barn open on one side, wherein a dedicated sub-group were in the sixth year of a four-year spare time boatbuilding project. A 56 foot aluminium fin keel monohull that a gang of six guys had set out to build together from scratch.

Only two of the six were working regularly, but by golly they worked hard. Progress was, alas still snail-like. That was in 1994/5, and as of last year they reckoned there was still another year's work involved, which is what they said in 1996, if I recall rightly.

In the two years I lived there it became clear that going sailing again was a brilliant idea, but that this was not the way to do it.

The 'designer' of their boat called them one day to tell them that he had recalculated the ballast ratio, so they should pour about one ton less lead into the huge hollow aluminium keels.

Guess what? They already poured the keels! So a week or so of drilling was needed to remove the excess.....

We wanted a proven design that could be put together in a year, launched and sailed. But it still had to cost sweet f.a., and be able to sail the oceans!

I remembered a name from the sixties - James Wharram - who had designed notably seaworthy catamarans at a time when there were some funny designs around. There still are, come to that.

The internet provided a contact, then a catalogue, and a year later we took an exploratory holiday on a Wharram Tiki 30 on Lake Kariba. It was the best time we ever had, sunshine and wildlife and some marvellous sailing. Sail Safaris really delivered good value.

We fell in love with the Tiki 30, an inspired design, which led to a set of plans, a £12000 pile of plywood, fastenings, glue etc, and no new car that year or any other.

It took 1 1/2 years rather than one, although the two hulls were assembled with the cockpit inside 8 months. The remaining 10% of the work used up another 90% of the time! Oh yes, and the electronics/batteries/solar and extra bits of rope/fittings/etc added another £5000 or so to the bill. But we never compromised on materials, and it is possible to do it cheaper.

Labour was roughly 40 man-hours per week, with time off at Christmas and Easter. Without my marvellous neighbour Pete, none of this would have been possible.

We made mistakes (our first boatbuilding job) but we fixed them, and my sailing skills needed retuning to 30 ft cats, a bulging belly and the GPS era. We crossed Biscay on the second attempt, had an interesting time off Cape St Vincent, then an idyllic spinnaker run down to Lanzarote in sunshine and light winds abaft the beam. I recommend it!

Why not come and take a look? Boat's tatty, but highly seaworthy. We feel at home with that.

All the best, PC.

Hi I lost the thread for a long long time but found you again.
Thanx for the detailed story of sawdust and sweat.
I must get some real sailing experience in sometime. And get more than Theory RYA qualifications.
I'm currently doing a teaching English as a second language qualification in the hopes of getting work abroad - must remember to look for jobs round yachties favourite ports.

Hey Pilgrimcat where are you?
Latitude/longitude will do.

Hey Pilgrimcat where are you?
Latitude/longitude will do.

Must get rid of that echo!

I'm back.....

We got locked out with password problems and it was a "Bureaucracy"-like saga of mixed messages and Vogon decisions so I gave up.

'Pilgrim' is still in the Canaries, and we are off to Oz, but not by boat. well, not this time!

I'm properly retired now as is the memsahib, and the 'Zombies Awake' call from H2G2 came at just the right time.

The H2G2 Gurus have had a few probs resetting the password, so maybe it wasn't all my fault, back in the day

Did you go sailing, in the end?

Ben