New to the forum so I guess introductions are in order.
I enjoy building and use it as a way to teach my son about life. I am 41, he is 11, and my wife is somewhere in between..... (much closer to my age ofc)
We live in a
remote Alaska village in some of the most beautiful scenery you will ever see, the only practical way in is by airplane, though with one or two portages by truck some stuff can get barged in here.
We built a stitch and glue canoe and a 17ft powerboat and am currently building a three place aircraft(Zenith 750 Super Duty, scratch built not a kit).
Whenever we start a
project we start researching the next one, so once a
project is finished we are mentally and hopefully financially prepared to start the next and there isn't any 'boring' time spent in limbo.
We are starting
research on a 45-50ft
catamaran to build. Timeline being <3yrs to build the plane and 5-8yrs for the
catamaran. By that time our son will be old enough to fend for himself and we can sail off into the sunset. Or at least that is the dream.
'Dream' being the focus here.... we have never sailed before, but enjoy isolation and
remote areas and while all of our time on islands and warm beaches has been in tourist areas off of large
cruise ships, it very much seems like what we want to do.
Being realistic we want to get some sort of
experience in before we commit to building something so large and will be looking at either chartering and taking
sailing lessons over the next couple years, or even more ideally making some friends in the lifestyle who could take us on for a week or so maybe even a couple times for a more realistic view of what it is like. (Perhaps in
trade for time in the most beautiful remote place in
Alaska.)
I would love thoughts and suggestions on building this dream, encouragement as well as the blunt realities of it.
Are there good sites for reading and researching on building in that size range? Is this the main site for reading about real peoples day to day life aboard and traveling?
We have watched lots of youtube, but they are more 'show' and less reality it seems, there are some good building videos, but hard to find, I don't think many of the true craftsmen are that social, so you see less of them than I would like.
Anyways, Hi!