When I purchased Brown Sugar in 1992 there were piles of papers, drawings, plans, photographs and so on. Riffling through them I found this writing, which validated my fever for building a boat.
“Once upon a time I worried about whether my savings would not be better be invested in a house than a sailboat. Then I read certain magical words by Arthur Ransome, acquired the sailboat, and happily lived ever after."
The words are these, from Racundra’s First Cruise:
“Houses are but badly built boats so firmly aground that you can not think of moving them. They are definitely inferior things, belonging to the vegetable not to animal world, rooted and stationary, incapable of gay transition………The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content thence forward with a single anchorage. The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting place…..When it comes, the desire to build a boat is one of those that cannot be resisted. It begins as a little cloud on a serene horizon. It ends by covering the whole sky, so that you can think of nothing else. You must build to regain your freedom.”
“Precisely so.”
Arthur Ransome
My desire to build a boat was renewed after reading these papers. What does a sailor , industrial designer/engineer/ Architect do? Got on my computer and Design!!!! I started to design my own to the newer criteria of “small is beautiful” —a 9 meter boat. I designed a dog house inspired by B 52. Could be popped up to a flat out racer or a minimal cabin. Took my designs to Turkey in 2003 to build my boat looked like this. Talked to Tom Wylie and Jim Antrim here and Fatih Gorbon and Ali San for fine tuning my design. Thats before Juan Kouyoumdjian stepped in to into long forgotten hard Chine with ABN AMRO on VOLVO Ocean Race radically changing hull design. Lots of talks with lots of brilliant people.........lots of fun.