yophotoman's diy projects

Ever since I was a kid, with a pond behind the farm house, I've been facinated with boats. Not just any boats, but home made boats. I built toy boats from cucumbers, corn cobs, chunks of wood and other bits gleaned from the trash and around the barn. However, I waited many years to actually build a human size boat (pic left). I didn't have a garage for half of my marriage but I still managed to build one over thirty years ago in our car port. It sank in a month. I determined to build another someday and do it right next time. Not only did I do that, but I built TWO boats! One a gaff rigged sloop and the other a rowboat. Both were successes!

The Boat build didn't exactly go as planned. I no more than built the ship's wheel, when I had a parking lot accident, tripped over a parking bumper and broke my leg at the hip. After that, was sugery and recovery. Eventually, I graduated from a walker to a cane. At that point I called a friend and asked him to help me build a boat. He agreed! That started a six month collaberation and recovery therapy with my buddy doing what I couldn't until I could. I paid him for some of his time but he volunteered a lot too. He was far cheaper than a physical therapist and a lot more fun!

I officially started the boat in March of 2010 and finished with my daughter in law applying the name, Spirit of Largo, in March of 2011, one year of part time effort. However, most of the build occurred in the six months my buddy helped me. I think the Weekender could be built in six months if you were real serious about it.

I took a lot of pictures, and even developed a website with a custom photo album for all the pictures I took. I only posted the best of them, over 100 on a website which is now gone. Hope to restore that site sometime as it was mostly several albums and the best documentation of the Weekender on the Web.

First launch was in March of 2011 and didn't go well. In fact, the first half dozen times I took the boat out, something broke. I got a reputation as a "bad date." It took awhile to strenthen it enough so nothing was breaking anymore. Meanwhile, no one wanted to go out with me. There was no guarentee you weren't going to have to swim back to shore.

Eventually everything became secure and it began to function as intended: fun time on the water.

You can find the Youtube build playlist here --> Youtube Weekender Playlist
Sailing blog (4 videos) is here --> Youtube Sailing Playlist
There is a complete build website --> a Weekender II sailboat called 'Spirit of Largo'