As promised, here are more information about our projekt.

Time schedule: In the moment we are collecting materials, eqiupment and everything we will need for building two boats. In October, when the fall/wintertime in Northern Europe begins, we will move into our workshop provided by the city of Wilhelmshaven. Then our projekt really starts. 8 youths have signed up until now, with 4 who will make their second year. We will finish in may 2009, ready in time for the new sailing season. The biggest local yacht club in Wilhelmshaven will again take care of our (until then survived) youths and teach them how to sail.

Materials: Plywood: For hulls and decks, we use top quality marine rotary cut plywod only. Our official in charge at the plywood factory is looking for damaged boards that can't be sold anymore and normally would be fired in the factories heater. For example: the boards have failures in the top veneer of the plywood, or the forklift missed its target an damaged the edge of the board.

Epoxy: Our Epoxy is donated by the german importer of SP Systems. This is expired (to old) so it can’t be sold anymore. But it works without any problems. Glasrovings have weave failures and fillers with a little dirt in it from decanting and so on. SP Speed Strip Battens with broken edge profiles are our source for Western red cedar. All materials are sent as additional parts inside a delivery for local boatyards, so there are no extra transport charges anyway.

Fitting out philosophy: Yes, everybody who gave hints about this topicis is right! Fitting out a big cat normally is the most expensive part in boatbuilding. For a private racesailor, who is building a boat, fitting it out to the highest race standards to win regattas and championchips, your are right. You count 2500$ for the mast and 2000$ for the mainsail and so on.
But, we have a total different approach, lets say philosophy. Don’t think in $AUS or €. Think in Material, not in Money! Sounds silly? Not for us and here it is how it works: Imagine what happens when a carbon Tornado mast breaks. The insurance company pays for a new mast, or, if there is still warranty on it, Marström sends a new one immediately. What happens to the broken parts? Nothing. They belong to the Owner and he puts it into his garage. Complete with diamonds, halyards and everything. When I was at the Kiel Week this year, I invited the youth trainer of the Kiel Yacht Club for a cup of coffee and told him about our project. He donated me two Tornado masts from the “junkyard” of the Kiel Yacht Club Racing Section. They are broken at the diamond terminal and the repair will not even influence the bending curve of the mast. More to come, he gave me two sets of Tornado Square Top sails, made from hard finished Dacron and good as new with the comment, that nobody will use these sails anymore.
A local sailmaker promised, he will cut the sails down to any size I want until I didn’t change the length of the sails foot. Until the difference is no more than 15 or 20cm from Tornado to “whateveritwillbe” I don’t care and trim it out. And so we go on, Beams will be made out of broken ims masts, spinnaker poles from old surf masts and so on.
In our region we are well known, and when we put a notice at the pin board of the yacht clubs around us, the spare part boxes of hundreds of sailors opens for us. Ropes, turning blocks, shackles, shroudwires and so on. We collect the items at regattas and other events, where everybody goes anyway.

As a private Owner you could go this way too, but you have to pay a little and you must have the patience to catch the right parts, or even get it over ebay. But it works and some funnies accour when you have to take, what you got as a present. For example, our two Thump15 dinghies last year, were painted in copper green, quite a radical colour and awful in the workshop. But on the water it was better.

Ok, that is the way how we work.

With the best wishes from the North Sea Coast, Michael