intro: heloow, from the land down under or oz or so called 'australia'. below is a short little tale of my diy adventures building a boat-like-thing in just a few hours which we named 'grape hope, know chance' minutes before our grand depart and many unfortunate events that unfolded thereafter. read along and enjoy. disclaimer (hehe): for the record we are amateur sailors meaning land bound people with the occasional weekend hobby of taking to the water on professionally built boats like the hobbie cats the club owns and dreaming occasionally at night of a project boat of our own. definitely not boat builders - okay!? perfect.
the challenge: we and 11 other duos of hopefuls signed up to build and race a boat for fun **without any supervision or guidance** out of just: 3 sheets of non marine grade ply, 3 lengths of timber (vague and somewhat misleading), 2 tubes of sikaflex (wood glue), 2 sheets of plastic (sails), 100 screws, 1 length of rope and 1 role of duct tape (yes, very helpful). then race them or do as well as possible to not sink/capsize them around a yellow buoy in the bay.
the idea: build something that doesn't sink aka floats and something that goes forwards using the wind. im in australia and away from all the cities and high density populated areas in the remote northern territory. we are on the coast and about 500 miles dirt road from most things really - that's the location of this story. sadly no train lines around here :-( anyhow in this town people work at a mine (settlers) or practise their cultural ways and try to survive under colonialism (the first peoples) and our food comes on a barge boat twice weekly. it's more complicated than that however thats a very simplistic picture. our dreams for a catamaran hull structure died within the first 15 minutes of planning because, well.... we aren't boat builders and came to that realisation in a short amount of time thankfully. if you can call our lacking technical skills inspiration then thanks and that led us back to the barge like hull which was simple and hopefully fool proof. it worked a treat! it even allowed us to exit and board the vessel at sea with relative ease which was unexpected.
the hull: we made a few nervous cuts with power tools i borrowed from a kind neighbour after making our panels twice over having decided on a barge body. im pretty experienced at getting anxious about stuff and this was no exception. luckily, the barge was a nice simple design that has limited cuts and was thus more water tight in principle and also in practice(!!) inside the vessel was a bench seat, the controls for a rudder, 2 oars to propel the boat if our sails failed us (more on this later) and ropes to adjust the jib and main sail to ride the wind.
the sails: we made theoretically sound sails which lacked rigidity under strong wind, meaning we failed in practice with a sound idea. this let us down as we grabbed for our oars having really only made it a matter of meters from the beach after a large gust came and stole our mast. the gust first bent then snapped our mast and took our sails to the water, both the main and the jib. its nice to point a finger to the materials - which is exactly what id like to do in this case. i felt thoroughly mislead to see the so called timber being small beams of highly flexible wood composite on the day. in hindsight we could have toned the sails down a heap in size and maybe invested more time and resources into the paddles as an alternative given the quality and specifically the lack of rigidity in the 'timber'.
the costumes: helped alot - particularly my flippers and goggles which worked to propel us forwards once our mast snapped under extreme wind gusts and our paddles proved to work to do little more than stall us against a current pushing us back. i dived overboard as the captain remained within the vessel and commenced my leg based propulsion of the injured boat which sooked along. it worked for a bit and we made it about half way to the yellow bouy the race was directed towards.
the race and accepting defeat: after a gallant effort and becoming exhausted we stopped any further effort to move us forwards towards the yellow bouy. i reboarded the boat and we smiled a little more putting our feet up and enjoyed the currents ability to turn us around and take us back towards the beach.
in true viking fashion we burned the boats as the sun set after we had filled our bellies with laughs, stories and some food to make up for a days work.
maybe ill become a fully fledged boat punk one day (i hope).
ps - we captured many more photos on a phone that got killed by the salty water and cannot be recovered - so appreciate the tale in its written form and use some imagination to fill in the gaps...
oh yeah - this article is cool if you like the wind and maybe hate the industrial complex a bit - read here.