![]() I am happiest when I am with my human, in the mountains, on a river, or flopped down by the wood stove. The man I was supposed to live with in Norway did not want a disfigured dog Steve did not care so I went to live with him. When I was a puppy I was terribly behaved and my mom nipped off the last 1/3 of my tail, which is how I ended up in the USA living with Steve. I am a West Siberian Laika who originally hails from just outside of Oslo, Norway. Helen Keller said, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” It’s been far too long since he’s had a daring adventure he’s ready for something big. He says the longer he’s sedentary the hotter the fire burns for travel and adventure. ![]() ![]() He has led 28-day wilderness courses, guided rock climbing and mountaineering in Yosemite, patrolled the Appalachian Trail, traveled miles through underground caves, paddled Class IV white water in an open canoe, and kayaked in big seas. ![]() He gained deep experience traversing the wilder parts of our world on his own two feet, or by canoe, kayak, skis, and snowshoes. Steve attended Unity College in Maine, where he learned that he thrives on adventure. He feels very fortunate to have learned an immense amount from his family, and his love and respect for the natural world was a direct consequence of that upbringing, as is his love of woodworking and drive for self reliance. When she does, we’ll document that, too.Raised on a small farm in Western Massachusetts, he was surrounded by three older generations. In a five-year span our fans have watched trees become a boat that will cross oceans. All of the goals we put here five years ago, we’re pretty much doing: uploading a video once a week and making frequent Facebook and Instagram posts. This page originally said, “If we can inspire you, convince you to follow along and help us out a little, then maybe, just maybe, we can leave our jobs and build full time.” And we’re doing that now. We started with bi-weekly videos, but we’re now working on the boat full time and we are releasing one video a week to document it all. If we had continued working full time and building part time we expected to take a total of 6-10 years to build Arabella. That is the why and how, and whether we can continue depends on you. We showed a bunch of people that you could weld bronze into the prettiest (and mighty strong) jewelry one can put in a bilge. YouTube went absolutely bonkers when we made a smelter and poured that lead into a mold on video. Almost 100% of the lumber will be harvested from our property we mill boards on a small portable sawmill. We’ve foraged for and handled 12,000 lbs of scrap lead for a ballast keel. ![]() Everything for Arabella will be sourced as locally as possible, this is very important to us. When we say “build” we mean just that, from scratch, in our front yard, with our own hands. Thanks to people who document what they do, we all learn that new, difficult, apart-from-the-norm things are worth doing. We are documenting every aspect of the build as we go-we hope to inspire people through our videos on YouTube because we’ve been inspired by others who chose not only to do difficult things, but to also share how they did it. Once she’s launched, we intend to take her to the most far-flung corners of the world. Atkin calls this design Ingrid (when marconi-rigged) and Stormy Petrel (when gaff-rigged) and our boat will be named Arabella. We are building a 38’ wooden sailboat designed in 1934 by William Atkin. The challenges of building a boat are real, the journey will be long, but the rewards will be magnificent! What’s going on in Western Massachusetts, two hours from the ocean? When we started, our idea was met with healthy doses of skepticism, admiration, and even envy. ![]()
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