We live two lifetimes now, so it's like
you know. I'm gonna retire my bowl and watch television? It's like I just
couldn't do that you know. I'm Doug Jackson and I'm from Brownsville Texas, born and raised now living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, retired. Worked here as a Oracle database administrator, IT guy, for the last 16
years. I've been making things my whole life. I started off working with my dad. We
mainly fix things we broke. Tractors, back hoes, pipes, that sort of thing. The most fun thing I've built I think was the Argonaut Jr. It's a wooden
submarine and launched it nearly, actually we crashed it into the lake. It worked beautifully you know it was one those things, we were taking all kinds of chances. But the amount of stuff that you learn when you get inside of a boat you built and sink it to the bottom of the lake and bring it back up to the surface.
It makes things like Boyle's law means something, you know when you hear the
wood creaking around you cause you forgot to put enough air pressure inside
the haul..so that you know so it that I just love that. But the coolest thing I've made was
a 74 foot sailboat in my front yard. Well Seeker is a twin keeled, Chinese
rigged motor sailer...a sailboat. I built this boat because I was afraid
of doing things like this I decided to change my life that's what I did I
decided...I'm looking around at the world and people are doing fantastic things
and it's not me, so I decided go big. This is Lolani. She's all carved from styrofoam. We need to repaint her she's been too many years in the sun already without anybody
loving her. She originally started out as a work boat. I wanted to go from one place to another working... and then I got to looking at what the needs are out there and there's not a lot of small boats for researchers. And so that's what
we're gonna be, we're gonna be a free of charge research vessel for anybody who
wants to ride out onto the water to do science, oceanography, marine biology,
archaeology. Let's see, what else, you want to see the whole thing? So this is our pilot house, this is where everything happens. This is where you run the boat. You do your steering from here, you do your sail handling from here. It's not gonna be a yacht, but it's gonna be comfortable. The girls in bikinis is a great you know
picture, but I'm too old for that too... so it's like you know it's the science that
really calls to me. Down below us is the engine room and we have a hatch that actually gets down to there and the portholes that we're using actually came
out of a bar in Boston. I know your show is called "Coolest Thing I've Ever Made" but really it's the coolest thing WE'VE ever made. I thought it would be me building this boat but it's turned out to be much better. I needed a way of
documenting what I was doing so we started the YouTube channel SVseeker. Somebody sees that I'm doing some
welding and they want to come help and I learn from them and they learn from me
and the rest of it he just kind of grew. We're about eight years into the
construction and I've had hundreds of people come through here to help me out
from all over the world. Ideas and donations, those are the things
that are building this boat into a much better boat than what I would have built on my own. "What do your neighbours think? (Laughs) I get asked that question a lot too what are your neighbours think. I have fantastic neighbours. It's not the neighbourhood I used to live in. I used to live in the homeowners association... there is no way you could do this there. But I'm fortunate to have places like Tulsa, an industrial town, that does a lot of fabrication that this thing doesn't really seem to stand out
except that it's a boat. Main hatch is up here, that slides back and allow equipment to go inside the boat. Our monkey bars up here are for the sails. There's a big mast that comes up in the front there. She's a Chinese junk rig sailboat
and we're gonna fly them like the Chinese did. Flat without any Western
modification to them. To give you an idea, that's the size
of a person standing underneath this. Yeah we did the sails last August, so they're ready to go the battens are ready to go. All we got to do is string up the mast. So the forward sail comes up through a hole that's cut in that step right there. Big anchoring system and a big winch. We actually took this off of an old wrecker truck. Cheap. So off to the side is our masts for the boat. The big one there, we customized that thing. But the other two are utility poles. One came out of Illinois the other one came out of a junkyard here in Tulsa. I don't know how much we have into it now. I expect it's somewhere around 300-350 thousand dollars? The beautiful thing is I got donations too that come in in material and in cash and in people's help. You know people ask me, "how much money are you putting into the boat"? The answer is everything. Everything I have goes into this boat. So this is crew quarters. They'll be
bunks in here. A head, bathroom back over here. with a shower in it. The tiles all throughout the boat are Ipe. It's a Brazilian wood that does really
well in water. But this is the cheapest way you can buy it is...these are made
from the scraps cut off from people's decks. And then we sponsored them so we had people give us what quote they wanted carved into em. Cargo hold is next, and you gotta love our doors. I actually looked at watertight doors at an auction. I thought I was gonna get those for sure. They were in Oklahoma City like... who
needs watertight doors... They sold for $2,600 a piece. So we ended up building our own. And we like throwing in artwork wherever we can. If you notice the deck braces all the way down through the boat. They're all mermaids that have been
cut out on the CNC plasma machine. I love putting art with something that's
functional because that's I think what really gives it boat you know its life
its character. We have a Cummins five nine diesel that came out of the school bus that sits in the yard next door to us. It's a storage shed now. It's a 210
horsepower engine it should push the boat in flat calm waters to nine knots,
but the primary thing here to remember is we're a sailboat and my calling is
I'd love the guys that sails in the 1830s. They didn't even know what a
diesel engine was so. I guess the idea like so many people in my generation came from watching too much Jacques Cousteau. They had scuba tanks, they had
you know wrecks. It was just all those things that you're just you know way out
there from where I was in the world. That's why I guess I'm so happy now is
because I keep getting closer and closer to being the redneck version of Jacques
Cousteau. She's got a 1,000 pound fish tail rudder on her. It'll be hydraulically as well as manually controlled. Uh, the hull. It's called an origami boat so it's folded into its shape and welded together It's got waves and it bumps and things but I kind of like that. If you're doing a fancy yacht you take mud and you smooth this out so it's nice and fair. We don't care okay. We're gonna we're gonna dent it up anyway. She's got two keels on her which is a real interesting design that I just love because being cheap like I am, you can park the boat on your keels. So we can go into a bay that has a tide
that's going to go out. Bring the boat in, let the tide go out we can get outside and work on the boat. Scrub the hull, get the barnacles off, work on the propeller or whatever it needs to be . So it's the cheap way of maintaining a boat. I get asked all the time how we're gonna move this boat to the ocean and the answer is...wheels. We got two sets of tandem axles one on that side of the boat one on this side boat well we're gonna build a carriage between the two.
The boat rides along on that. A big truck with a fifth wheel hitch hauls the front end of the boat so basically the boat is the trailer. These have to haul us just 15 miles as the crow flies to the Tulsa Port of Catoosa. There we meet the water. That trip...you know when people ask: "How long will that take and how long
will it take to build the boat?" I just don't think about things like that.
I used to work under deadlines and such and they're great for corporations
but for having fun and enjoying yourself and when you got to take the time to
learn then you need time to do that. So, it'll take however how much time it takes. This 74 foot boat my front yard is the
Coolest Thing I've Ever Made You happy? Happy with that one? Producer: "Beautiful" Alright! Okay...Hey guys, my name is Guy. I'm the creator of the show. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you to Doug from SV Seeker. You can check out his progress on his YouTube channel. I'll put a description below. We filmed this show a couple weeks ago, and since then he's painted the boat and it looks incredible. So yeah, we're happy to be back for a new season. I'm going to try to get as many shows edited as fast as I can. I do this part time. I'm a full time TV editor, and I got 2 kids which is why it's been gone for a couple years... But we're back! I managed to get some funding. But yeah, subscribe like. Smash that like. I don't know? What do the kids say these days? Thanks for much for watching guys, and yeah, we'll see you soon.
This video is one of the best videos I’ve ever seen done on SV Seeker. Excellent video that really gives you a great place to dive into the SV Seeker project if you haven’t watched all of the videos ;) Don’t get me wrong without the incredible amount of work Doug has done documenting the build process this would not be here. Still worth a watch even if you have seen all of the videos
Doug’s view on this project is very inspirational. He is not looking for fame or fortune he is just looking to complete his dream. All too often people look at social media were they see the best of what the world has to offer (most money, most friends, most lavish lifestyle, etc) and people aspire to that and only that. Do what makes you happy. Don’t put stuff off because you think you are missing something. As the saying goes the best time to plant a tree is ten years ago; second best is today. Start something today if you’ve always wanted to. Worst case situation is you learn something.
With taking over this subreddit I hope to push this to an inspirational Platform that complements the YouTube channel and allows for a much greater depth of discussion. I know there is a pretty big group on Facebook but there is a lot of people out there that do not use Facebook. Hopefully we can inspire more people, and ourselves, with this subreddit.
I am very open to any ideas from anyone about what we can do with this subreddit. Please don’t take that as whatever you say is going to be set in stone but I do respect ideas from everyone. I will attempt to keep the direction of this subreddit consistent with the rest of sv seeker but how that is done can be accomplished in many different ways.