• Some of you might know me as a sailor/boatbuilder, but most of you probably don't have a clue who I am, so very briefly:
    -My name is Sam, I'm 25, a shipwright, currently working in Woodbridge, Suffolk.
    -I've spent most of my life on and around boats, and have sailed all over the world.
    -A couple of years ago I decided I wanted to sail on my own boat, not for someone else, so I decided to come home and rebuild an abandoned 40ft ketch with a friend.
    -We have been working flat-out since then, and are nearly finished.
    -We will be departing next year on a cruisey (probably about 5 year) westabout circumnavigation.
    -The boat is designed safely and comfortably around 6-7crew. There will be 2 of us permanently onboard, and the other spaces will be available to anyone who wants to sail with us. We will not be charging to sail with us, but the boat will be run on a shared-expenses basis, meaning each crew member will be asked to contribute no more than £20/day to cover the cost of food, fuel and maintenance.

    Here are some photos, to give you an idea of what we've done so far:

    This is the boat c.2007, sailing in the Med:

    This is the state we found the boat in, in 2012:

    To repair it, we had to remove all of the ballast (this took a whole summer!) and cut away all of the damaged hull and repair it:

    ...and re-ballast her:

    We were the left with an empty shell:

    ...which we are currently fitting out:

    ...and completely rebuilding the engine (it's been re-bored and skimmed, and is practically brand new now)

    We are aiming to be in the water by summer 2016, which is quite realistic, although we have a lot more work to do...
    So far everything we've done has been completely off our own backs. We have both worked really hard and put every penny we have into the boat. A typical day for me is: starting work at the boatyard at 8am, finishing at 4pm, then going straight to work on Annelis until 10 or 11pm. Then the weekends have been all boat work! However, we've reached a stage where we are going to need a little bit of help to get things finished, and will be mounting a modest crowd-funding campaign to help us buy the last chunk of materials- primarily about £5000 worth of special spar-grade timber, from Alaska, to build our new masts! We will be launching the campaign in the next few weeks, but we need a bit of help promoting what we're doing. We have set up a facebook page, which we have neglected, but will keep more up-to-date with regular posts, and a tumblr page too:

    https://www.facebook.com/ketch.annelis

    http://ketch-annelis.tumblr.com/

    Please feel free to 'like' the page for more regular progress reports, and we would be very grateful if you would share it, and help us spread the word!

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