When we started, our idea was met with healthy doses of skepticism, admiration, and even envy.   The challenges of building a boat are real, the journey will be long, but the rewards will be magnificent!

What’s going on in Western Massachusetts, two hours from the ocean?

We are building a 38’ wooden sailboat designed in 1934 by William Atkin. Atkin calls this design Ingrid (when marconi-rigged) and Stormy Petrel (when gaff-rigged) and our boat will be named Arabella. Once she’s launched, we intend to take her to the most far-flung corners of the world.  We are documenting every aspect of the build as we go—we hope to inspire people through our videos on YouTube because we’ve been inspired by others who chose not only to do difficult things, but to also share how they did it. Thanks to people who document what they do, we all learn that new, difficult, apart-from-the-norm things are worth doing. 

When we say “build” we mean just that, from scratch, in our front yard, with our own hands. Everything for Arabella will be sourced as locally as possible, this is very important to us. Almost 100% of the lumber will be harvested from our property; we mill boards on a small portable sawmill. We’ve foraged for and handled 12,000 lbs of scrap lead for a ballast keel. YouTube went absolutely bonkers when we made a smelter and poured that lead into a mold on video. We showed a bunch of people that you could weld bronze into the prettiest (and mighty strong) jewelry one can put in a bilge. It’s been a wild ride ever since.

That is the why and how, and whether we can continue depends on you.

If we had continued working full time and building part time we expected to take a total of 6-10 years to build Arabella. We started with bi-weekly videos, but we’re now working on the boat full time and we are releasing one video a week to document it all. Patreon support has made it possible. YOU have made it possible.

This page originally said, “If we can inspire you, convince you to follow along and help us out a little, then maybe, just maybe, we can leave our jobs and build full time.” And we’re doing that now. All of the goals we put here five years ago, we’re pretty much doing: uploading a video once a week and making frequent Facebook and Instagram posts. In a five-year span our fans have watched trees become a boat that will cross oceans. When she does, we’ll document that, too. 

With deep gratitude, and thanks for watching,

Steve, Anne, Ben, and Akiva