Our Story

As a kid I dreamt of being a merchant marine captain.

But as it turned out I acquired 2 engineering degrees and never went to sea.

As a young boy I sailed with dinghies and was always looking at sea when I had a chance. I loved to spend time by the sea or on boats. The windier the weather the more exciting, and I went by the sea to see ships and perhaps boats who still dared to sail in rough weather conditions.

At some point I convinced my father to buy a boat, but in the end he backed off from the deal.

During my corporate career I continued to dream about sailing, but never realized it.

My real sailing life materialized with my current lovely wife, Dana, supporting me in my sailing endeavors and we acquired our first old sailing boat a LOHI34. That boat is a classical (GRP) fin keel boat. A very safe boat. When we bought the boat we knew we had to substantially rebuild it. I did learn a lot from glass fiber boat building. During the rebuild project I even took the keel off and checked all the keel bolts. The whole project was a steep learning curve in terms of technical aspects of boats and sailing boats.

 It was fun, however we soon realized we actually wanted something cozier for our needs in order to sail longer and stay on the boat for longer periods.

So we finally decided to buy a steel hull and build the yacht of our dreams. With passion and creativity and pragmatic approach we have been able to bring this project now really far. Covid restrictions did put some obstacles on this journey, however all manageable.

This yacht project manifests our passion to sea, boats and living our dream.

This blog is our story about building a sailing ketch with our own hands and with the help of friends and how we launched it and finally got sailing – SY Passionata.