Building the boat shed

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 A half acre of trees for the sugar house...

Ebben stumping out the lot
 May/2012

A hard lesson...  broke the excavators main swing arm casting.
John Deere said no more are available...
Ebben located one via internet junk yard and had it in the mail within hours! Yup!

Through the jungles of Vermont

Aperios' stern in the distance

First bent going up!

After much searching: located a used steel town shed that had been disassembled and was about to go up for auction.   Combined with 15 used phoned poles (free for the asking) raised the clearance to 22' . 

A bargain at $1,200.00

Ready for cross bracing, grass seed and steel roofing party.
The frame is raised 7' on the used phone polls.
21' clearance on inside low corners of Aperios main bay.
Ebbens $1.00 32' Ericson will be in the left bay. Another story entirely!

Maverick Arrives!

Maverick arrives by overland carrier:

ps: 

Never lift a boat like this! once in the air we could not set it down to equalize the straps... 

a horrible moment I'd rather forget!

Maverick surfaces

As listed on Craigslist
November/2011

Locating "Maverick"

While paging through yacht listings one morning in October of 2011, I stumbled across a boat in central Florida that had been posted just a few hours prior. It stated that a dutch built 42' steel sailboat was within hours of being cut-up for scrap and that the owner was making a last minute push to sell it and its contents "as-is where-is". The shape of the metal work appeared (to me anyways) to have been built by master metal workers in a full ship yard and it clearly had the potential to cruise any ocean on this planet. Possibly the boat I had been looking for for over 25 years.

Further online searches located a friendly sounding woman who was (sadly) in the midst of selling her recently deceased brothers estate. Among her challenges was that she was running out of time to find a new home for his old steel friend. After speaking with her directly a promise was made that the salvage team and marine scrappers would be put on hold for 48 hours if I made my way south for a visit. I quickly  called into work to let them know I might be a bit late... I had a detour.

Arriving at the boat the following afternoon, I met the family of owners who handed me a dust mask and warned me about the molds inside. Then, looking around by flashlight it was disappointingly clear why nobody else had taken this project on. A full color spectrum of mold spores ran the length of the interior with textures ranging from dust-like particles that could be raised with the slightest passing draft, to leather-like growths that couldn't be budged with a putty knife. The hull had obviously been sitting unopened, wet inside and out, in the jungles of Florida for far too long.

After a whirlwind inspection inside and out the sunlight was gone and the mosquito population of the region dove down the hatchways for dinner. My return plane ticket was ticking away the few hours I had left - and it was becoming apparent that if this vessel was to transfer ownership it would have to be by noon the following day, leaving one afternoon to pack things up as secure as possible, catch a few hours rest and jump on the plane back to New England - and then explain the whole saga to my wife which would prove to be the biggest challenge of them all.

The next morning a flurry of phone calls was made in an attempt to understand the logistics and expenses of having 34,000 lbs of scrap iron picked up from crimeland central florida and delivered North to Vermont via overland carrier. It was far more complicated than I had imagined due to the sharply bending local roadways and the right angle driveway into the property.

It was clearly the largest gamble I had ever taken in my life and my stomach was churning over all of the unknowns. I was thoroughly exhausted from the combined effects of my gorilla style yacht inspection and the horrible gas station chicken. However, an offer was made and shortly thereafter, somehow, I managed to process the fact that I quickly became the owner of 16 tons of potential scrap -the entire lot sitting in a yard that had been robbed of many high value items within the past past 30 days. The boat had no locks, and in three days NOBODY would be around to oversee any of it. Hardly what I imagined as the first chapter in my book 'Boaterbliss'.

With LOTS of help from a family friend and the very kind sellers we beat back the mosquitoes, pulled the floorboards and packed a deep bilge with the highest valued hardware. Progressively junkier items piled on toward the top until at last the boat was nearly full to the overhead. We took extra effort to tangle large broken spars, old running rigging and lifelines on the top of the pile so that if/when anyone would look down the hatch with the intention of removing anything they would give up on the idea before they started.  The final delivery down the unlockable hatch was a horribly stinky array of overflowing garbage bags from the homestead that was being emptied. It was an effective crime deterrent. A full month would pass before anyone came to move the boat, yet the entire boat and contents arrived in Vermont as hoped. Wow... if all of Maverick's adventures measure up like this it promises to be one wild ride!

Houston Boyd - Former owner.
Imported Maverick to US waters.

To Dierdra and Beverly Boyd: A heart felt thank you.  

I had been looking for a steel world voyager for 25 years but had never come across a match that fit my needs. Your help and understanding in allowing me this opportunity is so very much appreciated. I hope both of you, and your family, enjoy this story.
As Maverick makes her way around the globe I will remain hopeful that you will join us for a leg - perhaps you will gain a sense of the wonders of the ocean... as had your brother.

J-

To Build, or To Re-build...

"I don't care... It's a metal boat!"

That is the phrase that instilled in me the certainty of metal for my next world voyaging boat. 

I had awoken one morning the night after a fast moving storm blew through an anchorage. When I saw a boat that had dragged deep into the mangroves and lay far over on its side I immediately jumped into my tender and went over to render aid. Surely, had it been me and my wooden boat the curtains would be drawing closed on the final scene.

A bit hyped up, I pounded on the side of the steel vessel offering up my services as rescuer, but to my surprise, the owner eventually, sleepily, peered over the side dressed only in his underwear. Obviously having been roused early from his bunk he wasn't much for small talk - he umphed out the quote above. Wow... what a different perspective on grounding out. His biggest concern was that he be around once the tide came back! My fascination with metal boats was confirmed. There-after I started noticing the volume of hard chined boats around the anchorages. The French seemed most fond of them and would often tell great sagas of their own builds. I was hooked.

Having spent a year recently reading volumes of books specific to the details of a full metal build I felt confident that my new library of knowledge, combined with my wooden boat building experiences qualified me fully as a candidate for a low level amateur homebuild. From there I started to pour over designs; hard chine, round chine, origami, aluminum, steel, down wind sleds, traditional shapes... wow.

I became somewhat settled on the possibility of a dix design in the low 40' range and from there I began to run some financial numbers. A month into that I began to see the ugly dragon-of-truth blow its devouring flames. The bottom line was that if I pitched in everything I could, and I were lucky, I could pull together a beautiful hull, but that would likely be the end of it right there. I had many internet forum acquaintances warn me that the river of metal boatbuilding is lined with unfinished steel cadavers.
The answer was disappointing, but reality was hard to ignore... I could not afford to build my own boat. It was hard to accept that a full build from my own hands was not in my future, but maybe there were other options? And so began my search for a rebuildable boat.

Time afforded me the education of streamlining searches on the internet and new possibilities were beginning to come into view. I started to believe that one day something fitting would pop up. It wasn't long before they began to surface. I had found the headwaters of the river of unfinished and abandoned metal boats. I began to feel that the game was back on and with it my hopes rose of one day having a capable little ship again. I wrote down my base of requirements, entered them on the net and hit the search button a few thousand times.

It's Time to Get Moving...

In earnest, this round-the-globe voyage became a reality at the end of 2010 after the unexpected loss of two family members who were so very close to us. We miss them both beyond description and their departure from this world has left us scrambling in ways that we never could have expected. We are all trying to be stronger now, but it is hard to make sense of what remains.
My loss of friends coupled with the passing of others I had known throughout my life, made the conversations I had had with some of them prior to their deaths impossible to overlook. Those that could see the end of the road drawing nearer sometimes spoke in a profound clarity which was truly inspiring to me. To these friends that I so much admired... thank you for waking me up and recognizing what is here.... now. This story is for you.

It's time to get moving...

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A friend once tucked this quote in my tool box prior to my departing a boatbuilding career to find a different life on the seas. Soon afterward I laminated the note inside Pincoyas pilot house looking forward. It remains the most powerful and compelling text in my life...
Thank you Ken Bassett

"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible." 

T.E. Lawrence
A.K.A. Lawrence of Arabia


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An inspiring quote from a true Vermonter, while looking at the scale of work ahead:

"Every man should have a project... 
      that he will never entirely finish... 
           and that he never needed in the first place...   
                                                                                ....yup."

K. Smith. 
Excavator Driver

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"I know in my soul I am not running from anything...
     I know in my heart I am not running toward anything...
         ...yet with no less conviction, I feel so alive, with the anchor  lashed firmly in its chock."

J. Whitehair
Euphorically Wandering Helmsman

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The roots of this adventure...

It would be fascinating to make a list of moments and places where people made decisions that would eventually impact their entire way of thinking and being. This blog is now underway to document a journey which originated through a declaration I made a long time ago while cruising on my wooden offshore ketch Pincoya somewhere off the coast of South America - see Pincoya below - "Land ho!  Venezula!".

My fiancee/first-mate remained unwavering whenever I would offer a compass course to follow toward Africa - to begin a jaunt around the world. The reply was always the same... "you've got to be kidding!" As much as she had become accustomed to life at sea the request to join me was just too much. Beth had never sailed before we had met. She was now thousands of sea-miles from home. She had run the gauntlet del mar and survived. An amazing woman indeed.

Ultimatums spat out in relationships are rarely healthy but in this case I could understand entirely the situation. Beth was tired of the seasickness, the isolation, and the stresses of life on the water and the time came that she requested a ride home. In spite of the fact that I had sold nearly every item I had owned prior to purchasing my boat and with the hopes of making a dash around the world vanishing before my eyes, I made the promise. I would sail her back home to New England and find another boat, at another time in my life to sail around the world. Written verbatim as stated;  "I can always find another boat.... but there is only one Beth!". Hence, we plotted our course northward, eventually sold the boat, were married and built a wonderful homestead in Norwich, VT with our own hands. Soon after our son Ebben was born and then came Bria, our daughter. Our lives have been truly blessed - but the global sailing plans were on hold, indefinitely. However, unknowingly, the seeds of the next voyage had already been sown. Since then, I found myself reading volumes upon volumes of sailing books, and dreaming of the wonderful places around the globe that so few have had the opportunity to see.

Pincoya - Coasting along South America
"Land-ho!"