It‘s time to look ahead and see, when and where we‘re gonna set sails.
First let me take you to the early days of the building process and the efforts to make my vessel fit for the adventure to come. When I laid the massiv oak keel, at it‘s core almost 80inch thick.
The concept followed the route Endra will have to quest, what will include shallow waters and transportation over land. Therefore I was looking for as little draft as possible.
26 pairs of steam bend and glued oak frames did give structure and stability to the hull.
I‘m not a boatbuilder, and no carpenter, woodworking skill came in the doing. As hanging almost hundred planks, each with its own bevel and turn. The planks were of sapele wood, 3/4inch thick.
Coated with two layer of fibrecloth they made Endras hull thight and ready to fliped right side up.
You’re may be always on the edge of collapsing, regarding the costs of enterprise like this, but as you keep on, you find the help to carry on. And with the hands of many Endra smoothly landed on its keel.
My workshop happened to be at the riverside. And on a river this boat shall voyage too someday.
The possibility of sailing is thereby limited, why I was called to involve an engine system. What I could afford, was a old Volvo Penta, which I placed midships.
But when once on the Indian Ocean sails are hoisted, I would need a counterbalance underneath. And so I poured 777lb of lead to a ballast keel.
Through that whole build I rarely dared to dream of cruising through the de waters. But unfinished as she was, I needed to know whether Endra floated and ploughed upstream.
And she did. Sure there was still a lot of tasks ahead, to ready her for her big journey. But when left shore for the first time, I knew that it wont be the last time.
The following months I was not only working on the interior of the boat a the rigging concept, but also on figuring out a plan to make a dream possible.
Endra has come to life when I was in Afrika. There I drew the first lines, and there her journey must start.
To find home by the worlds largest stream.
What sounds like a jolly adventure, requires a great deal of courage and lots preparations. Many obsticals are yet to overcome.
Right now Endra has no sail, not even a mast. That‘s something I must implement before midsummer, when I want to take her out and sail her for the first time.
Two summer seasons I shall reserve, for assessing and improving and …finding a way to finance this voyage.
Until then I do what I always do, taking one step after the other.
One particularly important piece to keep direction, was the first deed of this year. The prior tiller was made in a rush, why I was rethinking the the whole design.
Especially the transmission from rudder to tiller had to be stronger.