The concept.
We are building the boat we wished to sail in, especially Mark, who has spent a lifetime building boats for the most diverse clients!
We are now making the one that fits with what we want to experiment, show and prove. A boat that we are sure will please many people.
We want to take concepts into action and show that electrical transportation across the sea is a reality, that even beyond small boats we can build larger ones that are very reliable for professional uses.
Since walking the talk involves taking steps forward, we have been stepping it up since September 2018: we have built a wooden mono-hull vessel with modern techniques, an electric motor and a project for it to be used for environmental activities.
Welcome to our project, which for now carries the nom de guerre Ocean Observer 39‘. We aim to find a buyer for this boat, and in any case we know that it will captivate whoever sails in it, thus making it much easier to get specific requests for larger boats, smaller or similar ones for different uses.
We want to explore ways of working things out that will make us proud of what we have done, and we thus have in our hands:
- A safe, light, efficient, reliable, welcoming boat that is respectful towards the environment.
- A unit that will allow us to convince others that electrical mobility at sea is a reality.
- A team that can carry out variations on this model thanks to the ease of the building mehod.
Strip plank building: flexibility over lengths and finishings
We believe that strip planking connects with our philosophy of simplicity and of lowering our carbon footprint because:
- It is simple (it does not require huge investments in machinery at the shipyard)
- It maintains a human scale and a connection with traditional techniques
- It is intensive in manual labour
- It involves low resource intensity, compared to other techniques
- It allows us to maximize the use of wood and other renewable natural resources
Conventional modern boat building, which uses polyester reinforced with fiberglass, requires considerable investment in moulds which, both in physical and in financial terms, limit the flexibility when it comes to introducing variations from one unit to the next, or to producing different models at the same shipyard.
The technique called strip planking allows variations in the shape of the hull, its length and width, with minimal costs that mainly affect the 3D design phase on the computer.
Keeping up traditions
Porto Colom has a long story of shipyards where traditional boats were built: fishing boats (called llaüts) and other brave-at-sea vessels.
There is still one shipyard in action, Cifre shipyards, and there are remains of others whose uses have changed.
All over the island of Mallorca, a multitude of boats that were born around this Port are sailing, and we are glad to consider ourselves in some ways the bearers of the local naval construction torch, for some years into the future.
