The Mind of a Boat Builder - Presented by SV Seeker (Tally Ho EP37)

[Music] the mind of a boatbuilder you know a lot of us get into projects and when we start them we don't think they're gonna be that big then they turned out to be a lot of work well if you want to see somebody that's in that process you'll love watching Leo over a Samson boat company he started rebuilding Tallyho and it's going to be a huge rebuilding project listen did Leo let him explain it to you all right so my name is Leo and I'm 28 years old I'm a big builder and a sailor by profession I started boat building and sailing about eight years ago and I started off doing an apprenticeship in boat building and learnt sailing really through the people that I met in the backyard and as I was a traditional boat yard we were building traditional boats I learned on those traditional boats so since then I've been probably working about half and half between building boats and sailing them I'm from Bristol originally in the UK in the southwest of the UK and Bristol's got a pretty big shipbuilding tradition but I didn't get into boats until I'd already left home and done a bit of traveling for a couple of years and then I came back and decided to get into sailing and boat building so right now I'm in Washington State in the northwest USA on the Olympic Peninsula and that's where this current project is happening who is my hero well that's a hard one I mean off the top of my head I'd say maybe Douglas Adams or Billy Connolly I I guess if you had to be to do with boats and sailing and adventuring Joshua Slocum is probably the the one that stands out and then you know I've got the heroes in in real life many of whom my friends but I went massage dairy goats by name I guess I mean I mentioned a couple of people who are best known for comedy there as well as Joshua Slocum who who was the first man to say around the world on his own I guess I admire people who do things for themselves think outside the box and outside of what society expects them to do whatever profession or calling that they're drawn to and people who work hard to make themselves happy and do what they want to do well the boat I'm working on here is called Tallyho and she was she was originally launched in 1910 designed in 1909 by Albert strange who has become a fairly well known British yacht designer best known for the smaller boats and the development of the canoe yaw which is it it's more cruising boat designed for British coastal waters but Tallyho is one of his largest boats she was originally launched as Betty and that's the name she was designed as so she was built from teak and English oak in the traditional Carville style plank on frame and yeah she's had a long life obviously and suffered a lot during that she's had a lot of owners she she's probably best known for winning a famous race in 1927 called the Fastnet race which is a treacherous race across the Irish Sea and back and she won that race in the third year of the race and it was the year where they had some big storms and not many boats actually finished the race in fact only two did so she's she's a very seaworthy boat she's not the fastest or the most she's not she's not really designed as a racing yacht as such she hasn't got those long overhangs that you'd expect from a 5-4 you know a pedigree and Herreshoff or something like that but she's very very seaworthy and designed after the british pilot cutters which are the real british work boats that could take any weather later on she had a lot of different owners and she travelled a lot and she was nearly wrecked in the 1960s and then she was neglected after that and she had some time where she was used as a commercial fishing boat so when I got her she was really just ready to be scrapped basically almost just a pile of firewood but the history and the soul and the shape and the boat was still there I think Seren I've decided to rebuild her and it's a more less a total rebuild so they'll be you know a few bits left from the original but not a huge amount and the goal is really to make the boat seaworthy and make her as good a boat as possible while retaining the history of the story and you know as much of the designers is practical I'm drawn to wooden boats I think partly because of the romance really of a wooden boat and the history that often comes with wooden boats when I decided to become a boat builder I was travelling around and trying to think of a lifestyle I guess where I'd be able to work with wood and still be able to travel and I was kind of pretty sick of being trains and hitchhiking and aeroplanes and not that that's changed but anyway the idea came to me of wooden boat building as a way to do something that's sort of deeply connected to our roots as human beings I suppose and yet it's a practical way of travelling and since I've really learnt about it it's become clear to me at least that there is something very practical and special about a wooden not only in the romance of material but also in the actual practicalities of repairing it if they're properly maintained wooden boats can live indefinitely and the maintenance on the wooden boat is the replacement of planks or placement of frames replacement of the keel if you need to replace the keel but their designs when they're built in the traditional kind con frame way so that that is quite easy to do so it's not like a fiberglass bird where if you make a hole in it you've got a patch it but it's never gonna be the same as the original with a traditional wooden boat if you do the job properly and if you're trained to do the job properly it's actually quite easy to do that and then she'll me just as good as new so they really require a different approach and we in a modern society we laugh a lot the skills and resources to actually maintain wooden boats the way they were supposed to be but but if they are looked after they can just go on forever and actually get better in rather than worse and they're they're also kind of timeless they don't really go out of fashion and a lot of modern boats if you get one bit and then you look at it in ten years time it's gonna look dated but a boat that's already a classic is there only ever gonna be more fashionable developing and the other thing about the material of wood it's a it's the only material really which actually wants to be in the water salt water is good for would it pickles it it will stop it rotting so you really don't want to take a wooden boat out of the water whereas with most other materials it's the other way around you really need to take them out of the water to let them to dry out if it's fiberglass or you know make sure the the paint or the coating is is really good if it's steel or something else but salt water is so sort of is such a harsh element that there's very few things which actually want to be in it but would does and you can see that by looking at driftwood on the beach it gets stronger if anything in seawater if it's if it's a if it's looked after and it's always whenever you see a wooden boat that is that's damaged it's always fresh water that's come from rain so if it's looked after and their decks are kept sealed and you very rarely have that issue with wood why not buy a boat well I mean good question I guess the question is really what what do you want what are you aiming for and I guess at this point in my life I'm not aiming just to go sailing because there's obviously very much faster routes to to achieve that yeah for me it's about it's really about the feeling of achievement that you get from from building something yourself and then being able to actually live and and use it and travel on it and earn your living from it and when I rebuilt my previous boat just the feeling of of going off on it into the unknown on my own was just I mean it was just like nothing else I'd ever experienced so maybe I'm just chasing that buzz but then yeah it and it's not just you know it's not just that that feeling that comes at the end of the project either when you when you actually launch the boat but but every day overcoming small challenges in much the way in much the same way as you would in many lifestyles which is challenging but overcoming all those technical problems and and making something every day is hugely rewarding I think and good further I hesitate to say so but it's it's good for you I'm sure to to make things and and have little achievements every day which you can actually see well if you buy about chances are it's gonna be plastic white and pretty boring and we need more we need more interesting boats we need you know you know I think it's great you know for anyone to get on the water but it's especially refreshing when you're sailing and you you anchor in a bay and surrounded by hundreds of production boats it's very satisfying to see it about that someone's actually crafted themselves or whether they've repaired it or built it from scratch and that sorts the boat that I'm drawn to to grow towards my dinghy in their bring a bottle of rum or whatever so yeah I bought boat a little over a year ago now but for the first few months at least I was still working on a sailing yacht so I was kind of coming going a little bit while I was getting the stuff while I was getting a few things set up here and since then a big working on it full-time except the times when I have to get back to England to do some work there to earn money to keep this thing right yeah so I get asked pretty often how long this projects gonna take one of the boats gonna get launched and what I usually tell people is that it's gonna be two years from now and I've been saying that since since I bought the boat and then I'm gonna continue to say that whenever I'm asked for however long it takes and then the plan is of course that means eventually I'll be launching about two years early yes so I am apprenticed at a small boat yeah in the UK and it's not that's not very common there's a few boatyard do take on apprentices I think around the world really that's not that comment that people that are training to be traditional shipwrights but and I've trained building Bristol Channel pilot cutters which very traditional working vote of the area that I'm from really in a lot of ways similar to Tallyho so that actually was very helpful and then I went on to work in different boat yards where we built a variety of different boats mainly out of wood with some other construction materials but all generally fixed on wood and then of course there's my sailing work which I think helps inform my boat building I guess knowing what a boat is expected of knowing what's expected of the boat on on the ocean and it helps you know the sort of stresses and and so on it needs to be built to withstand and certainly the other way around as well and being a boat builder I think helps hugely when you're sailing it open again understanding the stresses and the loads but yeah it's um since I started by building I've you know really enjoyed it and especially enjoyed doing it for myself in the same way that I've missing to a saying to myself so I've always been drawn to my own projects alongside and working with other people well it all depends really and it's one of those things you know I'm determined to launch the boat to get it finished and lon and I hope to use find this materials I can but it all depends on the funding so yeah if I have to nail it together with some fly oh well then that maybe not quite but then you know I would love for instance to cast bronze good all the the floor timbers the floors and the knees and that sort of brackets which hold the corners of the boat together basically but that is pretty expensive and say that's not possible they not have to use timber and so I think to put a number on it it's gonna meet somewhere between 200 and 500 thousand yes I guess but I have no idea really well that's the other thing I have no idea about I guess I'm paid for it I started paying for it at least all of the money that I've earned from the last few years quite building and sailing and the last couple of jobs I've had been on pretty large and sailing yachts where I was able to save good money and wasn't able to spend much money which is always helpful but I certainly didn't really have enough to start the project even with the amount of work that I thought I had which was less supports and what I now realized I have so I always knew that was gonna be a bit of a push and I also didn't really know the cost timber in the u.s. I was actually expecting it to be quite a bit cheaper than it was so you know when I took the boat on I was kind of aiming to rebuild it for a hundred thousand maybe and of course that changed but that's one of the reasons why from the beginning I started making videos is hoping that you never know they might bring some funding in by also my main source of income is by building work so I go back to the UK and work for other people from time to time and again it depends on on how the other funny goes I've been really lucky to have some amazing generous people sign up to patreon and and SME donations which I'm incredibly grateful for and so if that continues and increases and I have to go back and work less often to the UK but at the end of the day you know I'm having to go back and and keep working as often as necessary to to keep the project going I guess I was looking for projects I think I'm happiest when I'm doing things for myself rather than work for other people so I had it in my mind that I was looking for a project I'd had the idea of building a new wooden boat for quite a long time this one came along and I guess it was the significance of her history that really attracted me to her and the size of the boat was around the side slightly bigger than us planning to build and and I went to see her and initially was shocked by how bad she was and and was really leaning towards perhaps not doing it especially when I started considering the cost of boat yards and workshops and stuff in the US and one huge contributing factor to me taking on the project was meeting the people who live this property and who have allowed me to live and use the incredible workshop and have the boat on their land and you know we have an arrangement and I hope them that it's beneficial to them as well but I'm certainly getting the better deal you know having very generous so the project really wouldn't have happened without that for a start because I just wanna be known for the forward to put her in a boat yard and we're in a workshop and it and somewhere to live and but I do remember the moment I actually decided to buy the boat and go ahead because I was just feeling very a mix of excitement and terror really at the idea of you know leaving my nice secure glamorous job sailing and superyacht around and basically throwing all my money into a rotten pile of wood with absolutely no security and it was this fantastic feeling of abject fear really but it was the moment when I actually recognized that feeling as being the same feeling I had had a couple of other pivotal points in my life that made me make the decision and then that feeling I'd had just before I went travelling on my own and just sort of just after I got off school and just after I and they just before I and went I was standing on my own in my first boat and the trip that took me across the Atlantic and just before I cross the Atlantic really yeah I had that Fenian and I realized that that feeling was something that came with the experiences in my life that absolutely given me the most and the experiences which really made me who I am so then I knew it was something I'd have to do better or worse well there's a good story behind that I was actually in antigua racing and met a guy in a bar it was a filmmaker and he was interested in filming on the book on the boat I was I was racing on and I got to chatting about this boat in the America that I was looking at and that was patio of course and then he was saying well that would make a great film he should he should film that and I kind of fight yeah whatever but he insisted and he actually lived in Seattle so when I when I flew to Seattle to drive down to see the boat he came to the airport and he lent me two cameras he said just take some footage when you go down there doesn't matter if you don't use it but then there'll be some footage of the first time you see the boat and you never know you might be glad of it so so I did I took some footage and I gave him the cameras back and he was sort of interested in getting involved making some films but in the end I had the footage and I was back on board the boat I was working on and had some time so I sort of threw a little video together and that's how it all started and of course you know I had dreams that people would watch it and enjoy it and get involved in stuff but you know I never could have possibly imagined the day reach his hand it's been just crazy [Music] so making video just does take that a lot of time I don't know how long the filming process takes because it's just something that happens every day moving cameras around trying to remember to turn them on and charge of batteries and empty of memory cars and all that stuff but a bit which I can account for is the editing process and that usually takes me about three days to make a video I'm probably not the fastest I've never done any video editing work before this project but I know I've got a lot faster since I started but yeah three pretty long days probably between 30 and 40 30 and 40 hours of editing to go into a video and then of course the uploading and the putting up the website for the posts and all the other stuff which comes with it yeah so it can be frustrating and at times really the most frustrating thing about it it's not so much the time but just the fact that you have to sit in front of a computer inside for three days well you know the sun's out and you've got long days where you could be working on the boat and that just kills me sometimes but but it is worth it it brings some amazing things and you know I don't have a boss so hey are you guys in my box there yes I use a Canon a TD for most of my shots with a variety of lenses so that's a DSLR camera I have a very wide angle lens and I have a sort of medium range lens and I have 250 mil fixed focal length which is really good for cinematic shots and I use a little condensing rode microphone mounted to that and I use that camera with the couple of different tripods so gorilla pods which can grip onto things a regular tripod and also AM electronic gimbal which keeps the camera steady for handheld shots which is really useful other than that I use GoPro sometimes many for fix time lapses and move it somewhere just looking at the boat and also in my phone and and actually my phone has the best slow motion so I use that for that sometimes but really you know as everyone notices videos can be taken on anything it's the content and the story which which draws people in and perhaps the editing I use Adobe Premiere Pro editing which is a reasonably good editing software I think huh well I hope to sail tiny Heric all over the world eventually but my first concrete destination will be back to the UK and it'll be because that's where she was built and I'd like to take her back to the harbor where she was first launched and where she was registered and also I'd love to compete again in the Fastnet race which she won in 1927 so that race is still going on and I could enter Tallyho and race I didn't have much chance of winning this type because there she'd be up against some very modern fast boat but it will be amazing to to compete and the route to get back home is quite interesting there's a few different routes and I've not decided anything for sure yet but I'd quite like to avoid the Panama Canal because then of course it wasn't actually completed to depend well contact the Panama Canal until 1915 so after Sally hay was launched I think it'll be fitting to to find an alternative route so there's around the Cape of course or Northwest Passage or all the way around the Pacific route then we'll see so for me I think the most difficult parts in the project like this are also two parts we have to make a difficult decision especially if it's something that means that you gonna have to spend a lot of time working on it and so for instance when I had to decide whether to replace my keel that was a really hard decision and because I really wanted to keep the original keel because of its historical significance and I didn't want to do the extra work but I guess I knew eventually that it really was the right thing to do and as soon as I've actually made that decision then everything became a lot easier because I could just get on with it but it's that indecision and maybe even denial that that it's hard and sort of psychologically a space and the other time that that happened for me was more recently when I decided that I'd have to lock the boat that was a pretty tough decision as well because there was some argument for rebuilding her in the ship that she is the historical accuracy I suppose but I knew that really and to lock the boat and rebuild her as a better boat than she is now you know as her original lines show her was the right thing to do and but again I was in denial about that a bit because you know lofting was a whole few weeks of pretty interesting but tedious work but you know interestingly both of those times I ended up glad that I've done them not just because it's made it very better but because I've learned a lot through doing those jobs yeah so you know been very lucky to receive a lot of help from people all over the world since I started this project some of that is just through people I've met here and people on you already and then a huge amount through the videos that I make on YouTube so some people will send me donations and this people who are signed up to patreon which is a website donation platform basically so people can regularly donate to something every time it videos released or whatever that a lot of creators use so I have some people sign up on that so I get incoming from viewers and that makes a huge difference to my living costs and material costs and then people come and volunteer their time as well so I've had a couple of dozen people at least come through here and they stay in the workshop and bringing their skills from wherever they come from and whatever background they come from so that's been amazing as well and then you know now I'm really realizing the scope of work that's to be done on this boat or at least you know it's realizing that a few months ago but not when I originally bought it and I'm realizing that that labor that voluntary labor is you know something that this project really really struggled without and hopefully people you know they come and hopefully have a good time and and learn something from it as well right well of course you know there'll be thousands every day and probably the biggest challenges will be things which I haven't even thought of yet but at this stage I think you know in terms of building the boat confident not that I know how to do it all but that I can find out how to do it or work it out I guess probably my main concerns it's more the financial side of it so probably the challenge will be just raise enough funds to actually do the but justice and get the materials that that she deserves to to make it a really authentic and long-lasting rebuild project yeah good question I don't know yet but I've made a lot of friends through sailing boat building whoo-hoo I'd trust at the helm of my boat so yeah I'm sure hopefully some of them will be up for a trip yeah I definitely start over again and I'm pretty much having the time of my life here I think would I do much differently probably not that much probably trying to it faster huh well you know the the most basic and important thing to say it's probably just go for it and hopefully that's what everyone says I guess it's um it is important to have some idea of the scale of a project and [Music] some experience to know what you're getting yourself into and because they do see a lot of people who perhaps take on a little too much and get a little overworked and sometimes these projects grind to a halt so I just say do your research go to backyards visit people who have the same projects people who live aboard their boats people who have tried and failed find out really what noose you're getting into and don't let it put off don't let it put you off but let it inform you into what the project is gonna be right for you because even the smaller specs and the smallest projects can be a huge amount of work but that can be hugely rewarding and in fact coming here it was something that said the small about the bigger the fun and they were onto something I think you know you could I you could restore a waif there a dinghy and have the time of your life camping in it and cruising around some beautiful island somewhere so it doesn't have to be massive start small and work up but better go for it well and I mean a very slightly of course depending on what's going on usually get up around 7:00 and I like to do a bit of work for breakfast because I'm not usually quite ready to eat first thing and then Jeremy just keep working and then go to sleep but usually crack a beer open at 5:00 but keep on working after that and volunteers turn up sometimes and stay in the workshop we sometimes have people would sort of just drop in and say hello and occasionally drop off some beer which is always nice and every two weeks I think my life runs in a sort of two-week cycle because I release video every second Saturday and so the week before that especially the few days before that is spent on the computer and so I try and make sure I've achieved something within that two-week space worthy of making into a film and then yeah usually in the evenings you know I guess work kind of winds down on the boat around 6:00 so it's to keep the noise down but they usually keep on doing something in the workshop even if it's just posturing around and then jack is pretty good at looking after us and cooking up some good food I wish I could say I did more picking but yeah we've almost got some music on I love working with music so it was pretty good variety of loud music going on usually and then there's a sort of dogs and parrots and chickens roaming around getting in the way and yeah we're trying we're trying to keep it pretty casual I mean I want things to get done and you know that sort see the main goal I guess you know we're here to try and rebuild a boat and progress has got to be made but you know we're all here because we want to be and then you know there's no reason to get too stressed about it a little bit of stress is sometimes helpful but we trying not get too stressed so if you like woodworking you'll love watching leo and his videos and you'll be able to watch him for years to come and he needs your support so be sure and pitch in there's a hundreds of thousands of dollars that need to go into that boat there's no reason why all of us pitching in a buck or two a month can't do that for him so be sure and sign up on his patreon and if you're a woodworker go give my hand no I forgot you can also buy a challenge coin this is tally hoes challenge coin it has Albert strange on one side and Tallyho on the other and it's something you can keep in your pocket to remind you to try and be as ambitious as leo is over there the coin sells for $20 $15 of that proceeds we send over to Leo at Sampson boat thank you [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Sampson Boat Co

Views: 228,096

Rating: 4.9033618 out of 5

Keywords: carpentry, carpenter, joiner, woodwork, wood, timber, plane, planer, router, joinery, jig, surface planer, jointer, tools, workshop, framing, timber framing, big timber, wood porn, DIY surface planer, power plane, triton, Makita, dewalt, cabinetry, boatbuilding, wooden boat, traditional, power tools, hand tools, shipwright, joint, interview, tally ho

Id: 7wdqZwc2Nyo

Length: 38min 51sec (2331 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 24 2018