Building Tokyo Express

INTRODUCTION

WHEN I WAS building my boat, whenever I met someone for the first time and told them what I was doing, their eyes would light up!

It didn’t seem to matter, young or old, male or female, the reaction was the same. This idea of building a boat, and sailing away seemed to appeal to a lot more people than I first thought.

I had no idea what awaited me when I started out and how long it was going to take. I naively thought, in 12 to 18 months I would be on the water… I had never built a boat before. I didn’t know anyone else who was making a cat. In fact, I’d never even stepped foot on a catamaran, apart from sailing small hobby cats at the beach.

Why live on a boat

Before I started to build, I never stopped to ponder the reasons or grounds for this urge. I just wanted to make a boat! But once I started living on board, I realised just how much freedom this life offers, and then I began to ponder, just how not free, our life really is.

In our “normal life,” it seems like more and more of our freedoms are taken away. In my lifetime I have observed many areas of my life, where new laws now prohibit, doing what I once used to be able to do.

But living on a boat on the ocean, you are left pretty much alone. You are free to live at anchor (for free) in so many places, of you’re choosing. I’ve anchored for months in the middle of the city (Brisbane), off the beach in front of beautiful resorts, tourist townships and in many places where you would be moved on or fined, if you were trying to do the same thing on the shore, sleeping in your car or camper van. But as soon as you move onto the water, no one touches you.

Once you sell or rent out, the things you don’t need anymore and move aboard your own boat, the high costs of living drop away. With no rent, rates or mortgage to pay, virtually no power bill, no car to register, maintain, and put fuel in, suddenly your financial needs shrink, to a fraction of what they were on the land. Meaning you don’t need to earn as much money to live, which is another massive freedom in itself.

With much less money going out, you can live comfortably with much less coming in. This opens up the possibility of being financially independent with a lot less. With a small passive income or a remote-working salary, for example, you can live with no fixed address, free to wander as you please. The world is literally, your oyster.

With cheap solar panels, lithium battery technology, inverters, mobile internet, satellite communications, and all the other technology available at low cost, today is a great time to be living on the water.

You don’t need to live like a gypsy, and you don’t need a big bank account either. Technology is cheap these days and the raw materials to make a boat are also inexpensive. You can build a very comfortable home to live and travel around in, without spending a lot of money. We will go into this in a lot more detail in Chapter-12.

Beyond all these practical reasons, you are living in touch and in tune with nature, the cycles of the moon and the tides. I have never experienced so many beautiful sunsets and sunrises, as in the time I lived on that boat. Even anchored in the same place I built the cat.

I wondered if these sunsets had been happening all the time I was working in my shed? I hadn’t noticed them before. And you are living in a home where you can change the view out the kitchen window whenever you want. It can take you to places! It’s a very cool way of life.

Why build

Building a boat is a project that will awaken your creativity, like nothing else. The sense of achievement making a craft this size was definitely at the top of the scale of anything I’ve done before. And the bonus is you save a lot of money in the process. There are also freedoms in building, similar to those enjoyed living on the water, in that you are free to create what you want, how you want.

Compared to making your own house there is a lot less red tape, in fact in Australia, there is no red tape. If it is a private vessel, what you create and how you create it, is totally up to you. When I registered my 12m catamaran in Queensland, it was a paperwork exercise, filling out the forms with the main dimensions of my boat, the engine numbers, etc., and paying my money of course.

But I didn’t have to have my boat checked or certified by anybody. I could have built it in any shape I wished, from any material and in any fashion. The plans didn’t need to be approved or come from a qualified designer. I could have designed it myself, (and the next one I will). Once I was on the water, I didn’t need a license to drive my boat either.

The only rules I needed to adhere to, were that I had the required safety gear onboard when I launched her. But that was no hindrance, that is common sense. I want those things on my boat anyway. So making a boat leaves you a lot of freedom to create something how you want. When you are finished, you will know your boat like the back of your hand. It comes with responsibility, and that’s a good thing.

No walk in the park

Living on a boat is magical. It is literally, the last freedom, for those reasons mentioned above, and many more. You can experience so many moments that make you feel like you are living in a movie, living a dream (you are). But it also puts you in situations where you can easily lose your life.

Living and sailing on the ocean is no walk in the park, and from time to time, you will be pushed to your limits. Your strengths, resourcefulness and ability will be tried in ways you have probably never experienced living ashore.

Living on the sea sorts out the “men from the boys”, and it will find your weaknesses, real fast. You can’t fake it, living on the ocean. I have never been so tested in all my life. I learned respect, with a capital R, and humility in the years I lived aboard.

Build or buy

So, if you are thinking about living on a boat, you can either buy one (new or second-hand), which is probably the most common way into boating, or you could build your own, either by yourself, or have it made for you. The choice is a personal one, and you probably know already what option feels right for you.

Building a boat is a project that will satisfy your creative urges, or awaken them! For me, creating my boat was more rewarding than the many years I lived on my boat, although those years aboard were a fantastic time in themselves. They are different rewards, and I wouldn’t want to have missed either of these experiences.

If you are thinking of building, then the next biggest question is probably whether you are biting off more than you can chew. It is a big project, that runs over many years, and requires a significant investment in money to see it through. So it is good to feel confident before starting, that once you start, you are going to finish it!

What’s in the book?

This book is the Story, of how I built a 40ft catamaran which I named “Tokyo Express”. In the book I share my journey, the thoughts and apprehensions I had, before and during the build. The problems and solutions I came up with.

The second half of the book gets heavier into the technical side of how I created the many parts of my boat. It is not a how-to guide, but it will give you a lot of useable ideas to take away.

To add a little colour to the story, I go off on a tangent at times, as I share with you the related and sometimes unrelated things that were connected with this story and were a part of my life at the time.

The book starts off discussing some of the reasons I had for choosing a cat over a keel yacht. This is a significant decision, whether you are buying or building, and one worth pondering well, before making your decision. The difference between sailing and living on a multihull compared to the more traditional keel yacht is enormous.

Chapter-two begins the story, some years before, with the twists and turns that my life took, that finally led to the building of Tokyo Express. I will walk you through the build as it happened with the details and things I think are worth considering if you are thinking of building a boat too.

There is a timeline at the back of the book, that lists all the significant events throughout the build. It will hopefully give you a bit of a yardstick, an idea, of how long the different phases took for me, to help you judge better what lays ahead of you. They are linked to their corresponding sections and (if you are reading the ebook) you can jump back and forward between the timeline and the parts of the book as you go.

In life, I try to break anything complex up into its parts to make it more manageable. If you are building a boat, it can help from getting overwhelmed. Chewing on bite-size pieces allows me to focus on one thing at a time and give each one all my attention. Later in the book as we step through the different sections of the boat, like steering, engine installation, electrical systems, etc., I will explain to you one by one, how I tackled them.

Many ways to save money

Yachting is notorious for being expensive, a rich man’s sport. But I didn’t share that philosophy and I proved it doesn’t have to be that way. I had more time than money, so I tried to make everything I could, especially if there was a fair amount to be saved.

I built a lot of the major components and systems that you would usually buy, or have made for you, and I saved quite a bit in the process. If you have a large budget, you can skip these steps and just pay for them, saving a lot of time in the process. But if you don’t have a big budget, and you have more time than money, as I did, there are alternatives.

You can make some or all of the systems yourself, without too much work, and there are some things you don’t really need as well. There are also things you can make better than what you buy. Despite being “homebuilt” I ended up with a sturdy, lightweight boat that performed exceptionally well, and it was built on a tight budget. After 20 years in the water, she still looks the same as the day she was launched.

Read through the book, you might find this dream is more affordable and possible than you think.

Getting started

I got close to starting many times, but for one reason or another, it got put on hold. Finally, that turned out to be a good thing. The boat I ended up building was a very different craft from my early plans.

When I started building, I still wasn’t sure exactly how I was going to create this yacht. I’d never made a boat before. I didn’t know if I had enough money to do it (I didn’t). As I got closer to launching my cat and the money was running out, I kept striking things off my list the closer it came to getting in the water, things that I could do without.

I launched with only one sail (the mainsail), no deck winches, no anchor winch and a lot of other things missing. But I had the necessities, the safety gear, navigation equipment and the gear I needed for living aboard.

It was camping in those early days, showering with water from the kettle, cooking on a camping gas stove, and I loved it. I was on the water, living my dream, not still in my shed dreaming. The work continued, but at a much more leisurely pace than before.

There are so many ways to arrive at your goal, to fit in with your circumstances and budget. I did quite a few things a bit differently to the way things are “normally” done, and they worked out well. In the following chapters, I describe how.

Do it yourself

For sure it is not for everyone building their own boat. A few people were keen to convince me it was not a good idea, that it was fanciful thinking, suggesting I would be better off to just buy a second-hand boat. But it’s not the same.

The reasons for building a craft go beyond the dollars (even though you will save a lot of dollars). And what you end up with is a new boat, not a second-hand one.

For me, there was no question about building or buying. Building was all I wanted to do. If you have made things yourself, you will know what I mean.

You will also, never feel the same way about, and have the same connection to, a craft you bought, compared to a yacht you created. There is a nice end to this story that came nearly 20 years after “TE” was launched, near the end of the book.

Don’t put it off

It is good to research thoroughly and be comfortable with the path you are going down, but I believe it’s also important not to wait until you have every eventuality covered before starting. You may end up waiting forever.

I hope that you can find inspiration from reading this, that spurs you on if you have a similar dream. It was one of the most challenging and memorable times of my life, and I’m so glad I didn’t miss it.

If it is something that has been calling you, listen to that calling. It might be something you don’t want to miss out on in your life either. Anyway, this is my story…

So, let’s begin!

CHAPTER ONE

Cat vs keel yacht

1.1 WHY A CAT?

DISCUSSING THE PROS and cons of cats verses keel yachts can be a dangerous thing to do. The topic is like talking about religion, and many people stand by, and defend their beliefs quite vigorously!

So, I will tread lightly. I’m not trying to preach or convert anyone to multihulls. But for those people who are not in either camp and are open to hearing other’s opinions, I list my two bob’s worth below, about what I have learned in my time building and living on a cat.

Keel yachts

I liked the Van der Stadt designs. Back in the early 80s, Jack, a friend of my Uncle’s was building himself a 40ft Van der Stadt in steel, in Warrnambool – Victoria. Warrnambool is a coastal town not too far from the well known, Great Ocean Road. The weather here gets pretty wild and woolly in winter. It’s on the windswept southern coast of Australia. The only thing south of here is the Antarctic.

There were many a sailing ship, shipwrecked along this stretch of coastline back in the old days. After months-long ocean passages, bound for Melbourne, from England and other ports far away,  it must have been a tragic end, just hours away from entering Port Phillip Bay and arriving at their destination.

Jack who was retired was a perfectionist, and his work reflected that. I visited the shed on occasions with my uncle Rob, where he was welding up the hull. I loved moments like these they always added to that burning desire to be building my own. After many years of work Jack finished his boat, and together with his wife spent the next 10 years sailing around the world.

Boats of steel

I had dreams about doing the same, and I even purchased study plans for that boat. This was in my early days of working on ships. Before I went to sea, I did my apprenticeship as a fitter and turner, so I was used to working with steel. Doing a trade as fitter was the traditional route into becoming a marine engineer, going to night school to get the additional subjects needed, before starting work aboard ship.

The tugboats my Dad worked on, that I loved going out on as a kid, were made of steel. Everything I knew or worked on was made from steel. So it seemed logical to build a yacht out of metal.

I did a lot of research into the pros and cons of steel versus aluminium. Paint systems, construction methods, costs, maintenance, galvanic protection and so on. But at the time I still didn’t have the money to build a 40ft boat. It still remained a dream.

Advantages of one hull

• Windward performance – keel yachts go to wind well, with their large keels (although not all keel yachts have a good keel). They can point high and go to wind exceptionally well, even at slow speed. You can feel it even before you leave the marina. On a vessel with a good keel under it, how well they pivot around it maneuvering in and out of the pen. It anchors them in the water.
• Less room needed in the marina – Which means lower charges and it’s easier to find a berth. Some marinas don’t have space for a full-width cat. In Europe, most yachts berth stern-to (with the anchor or a ground line holding the bow out, and the stern (back of the boat) tied to the marina dock.
• Less work to build – There is much less surface area to be sanded, and less material in a monohull of the same length as a multihull. When making a cat, I felt like I was building two boats (I was, basically).
• Much smaller shed needed to work in – with a narrow hull. Makes it easier to find a place to build. Even in a suburban backyard.
• Strength – (depending on the construction). For boats made from steel, they are sturdy and can survive a lot of punishment. For a keel yacht, building from steel is an option. They are so heavy anyway, due to the tonnes of lead then need to carry to stay upright, the extra weight of building the hull from steel instead of fibreglass, compared to the overall weight of the boat, is not as significant a penalty, percentage wise as it would be if cats were built this way. So this is an option and an often chosen material for a homebuilt boat. Also, the hull of a keel yacht is more in the shape of an eggshell and has a much smaller deck area than a similar length cat, meaning they are an inherently stronger form if they took a freak wave dumping on them for example. It was something I pondered a lot with my cat on the open ocean. Its expansive deck area and large, flat aft cabin bulkhead, didn’t seem that strong if a tonne of water dumped itself on it. I beefed up the deck and aft cabin bulkhead in my boat considerably, beyond what the plans called for, but the shape of a keel yacht gives it greater “survivability” purely because of its form.
• More straightforward to transport – For Road transport, being narrower they take up much less of the road. A large cat takes up both lanes. So this, along with the need for a smaller shed means you could build a keel yacht in many more places than a cat.
• Less expensive – New, as well as second-hand keel yachts are substantially cheaper than a similar size cat. There is also a much bigger market for keel yachts and more competition. There is a lot more scope and options to choose from. You can find some good value for money, as in the quality of the fit-out and equipment, in both the new and even more so in the second-hand market if you shop around.
• Only one motor – to buy and maintain. It is usually a larger motor, but you just need one. It cuts down the expense and complexity. Also, the room you have available to install it in is much more than what’s available in a cats narrow, shallow hull. It is a lot more convenient and more accessible to find room to position a motor, in a keel yacht.
• Self-righting – If they capsize they will right themselves. This is probably the first argument from keel yacht owner’s for owning one.
• More plans available – If you are going to build, there are a lot more keel yacht plans to choose from, and a bigger range of designers who are much longer established than multihull designers.
• More efficient to cool or heat – May be not a big thing, as most boats don’t build in heating or air conditioning. Yachties usually follow the sun, but if you are going to operate in extreme climates and want this ability, it is more economical to heat or cool a keel yacht, being a smaller space with much less surface area.

Catamarans

Below is a list of some of the reasons why a catamaran made sense to me. I try to write this from as neutral a perspective as possible, but I admit that I have a bias so you can take that into account as you read this. But it’s one other person’s opinion (mine), that you can throw into the mix to consider, to help you draw your own conclusions on what makes sense for you.

Advantages of two hulls

• Speed – Probably the biggest reason for many people, myself included, for wanting a multihull is being able to go fast. I was immediately impressed with the speed potential of a multi, not being a prisoner to my hull speed. No matter what you say, “I’m just cruising,” “I have time,” “I’m not in a hurry,” nothing puts a smile on your face, (or alternatively, brings on depression), like speed (or the lack of it) on the water. The ability to go even a few knots faster on the water especially when cruising can shave hours off your day in the time taken to reach your destination. Or shave days or weeks off the trip, on a more extended voyage. Not just that, its FUN when you are going fast! Something you need to experience to appreciate. When you start surfing, leaving rooster tails behind you, and the ride suddenly becomes soft, like you are riding on a cushion of air, it’s magic. The atmosphere changes, from “when are we going to get there?” to “I don’t want this ride to end”. It is exhilarating when you get going fast…
• Stability – A cat, despite all of the negative talk about the risk of capsizing, is enormously stable. This makes such a difference to life on board when you’re underway. It is a huge point, and my experience confirmed everything I had read about it. Even in substantial breaking seas and strong winds, I didn’t feel as if I was going to be turned over, and indeed I wasn’t. But this is the extreme case. In normal operations, which are most of your time on the water, it is just comfortable when you are sailing. I didn’t have to walk around on a 30-degree angle clutching on to everything to stop from falling over. I could leave my coffee cup on the table in the roughest of weather, and it never moved or spilled. My dining table wasn’t attached to the floor, nor did it have fiddles (the raised edging around the table’s edge,) it simply sat on the floor, just like in your house, and it didn’t move. After speed, this is the greatest thing about a multihull compared to a keel yacht. And it’s not just at sea either, stability at anchor, I would say, is even more important, especially when you are living on your boat. See the note below.
• Space – Cats have so much more room inside and on deck, than a similar length keel yacht. Tokyo Express had 3 double beds, 2 of them were king-size (2m x 2m), in 3 cabins. Plus 2 single beds in the bow section, in the early days. The large bridge deck had all around views and a huge cockpit.
• Seasickness – people are much less likely to get seasick on a multi, than on a keel yacht. I had many crew members, who were pleasantly surprised that they didn’t get sick like they usually did. Cats usually have a more “airy,” spacious feel when inside with a lot more window area. You can be inside, keeping warm and still see all around you. Going below decks in a keel yacht when you are seasick can feel a bit claustrophobic, and when you lose sight of the horizon, it is often what sends people over the edge.
• Floatation – the ability to float if you put a hole in your bottom, or you capsize. The materials that make up the hull, floors and bulkheads in a multihull are usually made from materials less dense than water. If not too much extra weight is added, in the form of engines and auxiliary equipment, and with some designed in void spaces, it means your boat is not likely to be going to the bottom if you hole it or turn it over. A keel yacht has tonnes of ballast ready to pull it there if she gets holed or capsizes. Note – an aluminium cat is not the same. If you weld up an aluminium cat, you are then more like a keel yacht in this regard, albeit without the ballast.
• Shallow draft – allowed me to cross bars and enter rivers and go places no keel yacht can go. This is a big issue on the Queensland coast where I did a lot of my sailing. My homeport on the river in Noosa Heads, for example, is inaccessible to most all keel yachts. There is a shallow ever-changing sandbar with surf that even I, could only cross on the high tide. My rudders were my deepest part, but they can be made “kick up” as well if you are really serious about getting up creeks, or being able to beach your boat.
• The ability to track fast and straight – when entering rivers with bars, in big seas. This ability saved my butt on many occasions, surfing before large waves at 20+ knots. I have vivid memories of crossing the Wide Bay bar on the southern end of Fraser Island with a lot of people on board. A mile offshore in only 2 metres deep water, in 30 knot winds, with a wall of breaking water approaching from behind. I thought I was a gonna. It picked my stern up and I thought we going to get pitch-poled and turned over end for end, but I surfed this massive wave at over 20 knots, for quite a distance, keeping in front of its froth until we were back in deeper water and it flattened out. Having two rudders, and two long slender hulls, help the cat track like it’s on rails, and with the speed ability to surf, saved the day.
• Cats don’t roll at anchor. This might sound insignificant if you have never spent time on a yacht before, but if you are going to live aboard, this point is enormous. Recently I spent a week cruising aboard my friend’s modern 13-meter DuFour, keel yacht sailing around the Balearic Islands. Beautiful boat, with a lovely big interior and we had great smooth weather for sailing, but after that week of rolling, I was happy to arrive in a marina where it stopped moving. I couldn’t entertain the idea of living on a keel yacht, for this reason alone. Rolling uncontrollably at anchor with the slightest of waves, or the passing of nearly every vessel, was enough to want to get off. Despite the stove being on gimbals, dinner almost ended up on the floor on more than one occasion. The rolling was extreme. A heavier cruising yacht would roll less or have a slower roll, but they still roll. And size doesn’t necessarily make it better. On the larger superyachts and aboard cargo ships, rolling at anchor has been enough to do my head in on many occasions. With two hulls, you just don’t roll, period. No matter how small the boat is. A cat “jiggles” a bit then stops pretty quickly after the passing craft has gone by. Or it will keep moving about continuously if there is wave action, but it doesn’t roll. You never have to fear spilling your drink, and you don’t need a stove on gimbals.
• Lightweight – Cats are light. There is no comparison between the two, as the cat doesn’t need to carry around ballast to keep itself upright. Because of its low weight and long slender hulls, cats have the speed potential as mentioned above, that is far beyond a similar size and style of keel yacht. This also means you are not usually headed for Davy Jones locker (the seabed) if you capsize or put a hole in the hull. The disadvantage to being light though is that the movement of the boat, especially in pitching, can be sharp and rough, with fast accelerations. It’s a movement a bit similar to riding on a fast train although it can get a lot worse in the wrong conditions. It’s not rolling, but it can get very uncomfortable. My cat tended to pitch rather violently if I was going to wind and the pitch frequency of the waves matched the boat. It didn’t happen all that often but it’s certainly not always smooth sailing!

Actually the more I thought about it, with weight, the idea of spending large amounts of money to build a yacht with the lightest materials you can afford and then pouring tonnes of the heaviest metal you can buy into it, just to keep it upright, seems ridiculous.

The argument that is so often thrown up against multihulls, by keel yacht owners is that if you turn one over you are in trouble. And they are right, you are in trouble. You need assistance to get a big cat or trimaran up again. But, when did you last hear about a cruising cat capsizing at sea?

Considering the amount of multihull craft on the water these days, all around the world, it is still something I’ve only read about in books. I can’t recall ever hearing in the news about one being turned over, and there are plenty of them in Australian waters.

I think cruising cats and trimarans have proven themselves beyond doubt, that they are seaworthy craft. For me, that excuse just doesn’t hold water, and my experience on the ocean convinced me, of their ability and stability.

CHAPTER TWO

Following the dream

2.1 HOW IT STARTED

IT WAS 1989, on the Sunshine Coast in south-east Queensland. I was living in a caravan I’d bought for 2000 Aussie dollars, after returning from Japan a few months earlier. I’d sold up everything in Geelong – Victoria, earlier that year and flown up to Japan to start a new life as an English teacher.

But on the flight up there I had been up on the flight deck, as I usually did, talking to the pilots. Those were the days when the cockpit door wasn’t locked, and you could always go forward and have a chat and a better view. It got me restless again. After a couple of months living in Tokyo, I decided this idea of being an English teacher, wasn’t really for me. I wanted to fly again…

So I returned to Oz (Australia) with the plan to change over my New Zealand pilot licence to the Aussie one and look for a job in Australia. It was a few years since I’d been flying and it was calling me back.

I learnt to fly planes in New Zealand, my Dad’s country of birth, back in the mid-1980s. Flying was (another) dream I had, which I followed after working the four years previous, on ships, saving my money so I could pay for my flying lessons.

New Zealand

New Zealand is a beautiful country and looks even better from the air. After training, I got work instructing and doing a bit of air ambulance work flying doctors up and down the East coast of the North Island, with the occasional rescue, before ending up out on the Chatham Islands, some 850 km east of Christchurch, in the Pacific ocean.

The Chatham’s consist of two tiny islands, the main one is mostly flat as a pancake and windswept. Only about 600 people were living there when I lived there, and its main industry is cray fishing.

The islands are also one of the first places to see the new day in summer. The international date line bends to go around them. The population swelled here on the eve of the millennium, with planeloads of reporter’s and enthusiasts arriving, to be the first in the world to see the sunrise on that 1st day of 2000…

I flew live crayfish three hours over water, from the Chatham Islands into Gisborne, on the North Island, for export to Japan, in an old twin-engine push-pull Cessna-337. With only one seat (for me) and the rest of the plane filled to the ceiling with plastic bins full of monster size crayfish, all clacking away. It was an unusual job, with some exciting moments, but that’s another story…

A turning point

Anyway, I was out this night, celebrating passing the flight test for my Aussie CPL (commercial pilot licence) at a bar near the beach in Mooloolaba, waiting to met up with my fellow pilots (who never turned up) when I met Tanja, a tall, attractive German girl who was in Australia on holidays.

Six months later, after a long road trip down south to Victoria together, towing my caravan, we ended up back in the bush. On my parent’s property in the hinterland, out the back of Noosa Heads, living in my caravan. There are a lot of people who have escaped the city life and are living around here on small plots of land with enough space and trees around them so they can’t see their neighbours.

I had forgotten about flying by this stage and convinced Tanja that she might like to help me build a small boat, and sail around the world together. This was the first time I can remember the dream of making a yacht actually taking form, with real planning. This dream that had been swimming around in my head for so many years was actually coming to life and having someone to share this project with, made it all the more fun.

We spent quite a bit of time walking the marinas, looking at the yachts and discussing different ideas. Neither of us had much money at the time, so I planned to build small. My thoughts were somewhere around the 28ft range.

Boat show

It just so happened that it was the time of year for the Brisbane boat show. I’d been to the expo of boats a few times before. I always loved walking around this show and enjoyed checking out all the latest in marine electronics and accessories. So that weekend we drove the one and a half hours down to Brisbane for a day at the show together. But at the show, we were to encounter something much more interesting than marine electronics.

An inspiring encounter

At the show we met a chap, standing in one of the pavilions, with his boat. His name was Serge Testa, a quiet, unassuming guy who had just returned from a three-year around the world voyage, alone in a 12ft (3.6m) boat, that he built himself. Wow! And he created it for only $5000. He even made it into the Guinness book of records for being the smallest boat to sail around the world, and I think he still holds that record.

It might not have been too comfortable, but he did it! Wow, that’s an adventure! This guy did it, he did what most people only dream of. This is what life is all about! Poor Serge, I chewed his ear for quite some time and spent a lot of time going over his boat. I stumbled upon his yacht again, many years later, in the Brisbane city museum, (it is not there nowadays).

His determination to go sailing despite having no money, nor an idea of how to sail or navigate, just learning by doing, inspired me greatly. I bought his book “500 Days” (it is available on Amazon) and shortly after I purchased plans to build a boat.

I figured I needed a bit more room than Serge, as I wasn’t going solo… So I looked around and ended up buying plans to build a Bruce Roberts 21ft keel yacht in steel. It was bigger than Serge’s boat but still small, for two people to live on, for what may end up being many years together. I figured I could make it relatively cheaply making all the bits myself. I had welders and plenty of tools already.

To keep reading, scroll back up and get your copy of the book (if you pick up just one thing, it will be worth the read).