They roared independently of each other over Ireland's short-chewed hills on their motorbikes. Milos rattled along on his Kawasaki, Kerstin hummed along on her Honda. It crackled. Seven years later, they are travelling against the wind at just three and a half knots on the Bavarian Forggensee, but together. Top speed with the two-hp fishing motor on the transom. But Kerstin and Milos are glowing, they are beaming, hopping across the deck.
The small cruiser was launched for the first time just five days earlier. They nimbly loosened the tapes on the mainsail and guided the sliders into the groove on the self-built mast. As soon as the sails are up, they switch off the propeller and start the engine. A humming sound immediately emanates from the belly of the ship. The hull growls, trembles and scoops up mint-coloured glacier water. Now the rudder blades also join in, whirring in chord with the retractable keel as soon as the sheets are chirpily banged tight. The designer, Cristian Pilo, 49, is also on board. He and boat builder Milos Pupala, 45, take turns looking at the steering gear and the keel box, exchanging glances and smiling.
More about small cruisers and self-builds
Was it not a good idea to make the rudder blades hollow after all? Milos hadn't quite stuck to the plan on this point. When he built the boat with his own hands, a few machines and five dozen screw clamps, from the self-cast keel bomb to the wood-glued masthead. Just as he had wanted three years earlier.
The dream of owning your own small cruiser
It was 2017, Kerstin Ruhland, programmer, 41, was completing a three-month internship at Disney Research in Los Angeles. Four years earlier, he had come to Dublin from Slovakia and she from Saxony. "She was doing her PhD there and I was baking bread," says Milos, summarising the initial situation before they met. After studying merchandising, he was looking for a fresh start and found himself back between the flour and the kneading machine, baking sourdough in an artisan bakery. In a biker pub, Kerstin's and Milos' life spun together. "I then visited Kerstin with a fresh rosemary loaf. Who could resist that?" remembers Milos. During their time in the USA, they both spotted a modern wooden boat in one of San Francisco's harbours. "One day I'm going to build a boat like that," Milos enthused instantly. He kept his word.
"We started looking for plans that same autumn," says Kerstin about the boat-building fever that has been simmering ever since. They weighed up British designs and then came across Cristian Pilo's "Modern Wooden Boat" designs, which he sells online from Sardinia. "The plans for the 6.70 metre Idea 21 cost 450 euros, which seemed reasonable to us," adds Kerstin, "we gave it to ourselves for Christmas." That same year, contacts in the local biker community helped them find a workshop in Mainburg for a monthly rent of 250 euros. They were stranded there with their project in their rucksack for Kerstin's first job, in the middle of the Hallertau, a region between Munich and Regensburg known primarily for its hop growing.
First scepticism, then enthusiasm
Until then, English had been the common linguistic denominator for the Slovak and the Saxon. Now they both had to learn new vocabulary - Bavarian! Zwetschgendatschi, a plum cake, or A so a Schmarrn, what a load of rubbish.
"Why build a boat, a small cruiser, there's no water here, just hops," the workshop landlord spontaneously said. His scepticism grew when Milos arrived with little more than a Bosch jigsaw - his only power tool. "Right from the start, I only wanted to buy good machines, but only a few, and this was the first one I needed for sawing out the frames." Yes, mei! What the heck. "But he was still impressed by our project," says the self-builder. Milos, good-humoured, hard-working and cheerful, had already piqued his interest. The landlord pulled into the workshop with his forklift truck as the 25 sheets of marine plywood, which were soon to be delivered, were being lifted off the lorry.
My grandfather and my father often worked with wood, and I was always there," says Milos, explaining his thoughts on taking on such a project. So he got to work on the frames: "Kerstin and I had a strict agreement not to exceed our budget," and so Milos printed the PDF files on A4 waste paper. "We glued together 25 drawings of 48 pages each while kneeling on the living room floor." 1200 sheets! Before that, however, a scale drawing was needed to determine whether the finished small cruiser could even be born from the workshop around the corner in Hopfenland, ten centimetres of space was the result of the planning game.
Self-printed drawings and concise measurements
The frames alone exceed the dimensions of a plywood panel. This meant that they had to be joined with long overlaps and bevelled - the first major challenge and the reason for purchasing the electric planer. Milos built a jig for flat bevelling in order to achieve large gluing surfaces and good power transmission. "In Slovakian slang, a jig like this is called a jig, such things probably come from German."
"The landlord dropped by every day for a beer with a caramel bar and always lent out machines without charging," says Milos, explaining the genesis of his transition from workshop landlord to friend. When pouring the keel bomb, he once again used his forklift to lift the barrel with the lead pieces to be melted over the fireplace and poured the mixture into the prepared concrete half-mould. Don't shit there, then don't fire there! Means something like: It will work.
Own solutions and self-initiative
Milos continued to provide a Circular table saw , a Grinding machine , several Cordless screwdriver and found solutions for every challenge that he could realise with his own resources. "YouTube was my friend," he beams. But those larch stringers at waterline height could not be bent sufficiently despite the greatest effort. There were no instructions, not even designer Pilo knew what to do. Milos then sawed a longitudinal slot where the later bend would be greatest, bent them over the frames with a light hand and later filled the gap with inserted plywood the thickness of the slot. Da legst di nida! Knowing how.
"Over time, I bought all the screw clamps that were available in the local shops," says Milos, who began to really love clamps, "a shoe fetish is much more expensive. And with screw clamps, you get a lot of quality for a lot of money." Milos was initially worried that epoxy gluing would be too tricky. "What I didn't read about the complicated processing." "But if you build piece by piece, you get visibly better and more experienced," assures designer Pilo. If something really goes wrong with this construction method with stringers, frames and plywood, then a few thousand euros are not immediately wasted, as with a botched infusion hull.
Small cruiser self-build takes shape
And so kits consisting of plans, instructions and pre-cut parts would be both a blessing and a worry. On the one hand, the frames are already ready to be erected and the time-consuming cut-outs for the stringers are already milled out. "On the other hand, the learning curve has to be steeper, and CNC milling is currently unaffordable," says Pilo, explaining why he only has digital or paper plans at the moment.
Milos used mahogany-veneered plywood for the outer skin. "When the first coat of paint was applied later, I thought, do I really want to sail this boat? Or would I rather keep it in a garage, occasionally polish it up and look after it like a gullwing Mercedes?" He could never have imagined that anyone would ever even be allowed to touch his boat. "Fortunately, that's now a thing of the past." Milos is now completely relaxed with his eyeball and the "Alcedo" is allowed to be handled with plenty of thigh pressure to test its sailing characteristics. Alcedo means kingfisher, "it glides so manoeuvrable and effortlessly over the water, we thought it was a good choice," comments Kerstin on the choice of name.
The twin rudders, guided in the self-laminated carbon fibre mounts and, well, constantly trembling, work precisely. The crux of this design is that the control rods are designed so that the inner rudder always turns a little more. This worked, allowing the direct-action tiller to chisel sharp corners into the wake.
Precision is important in construction
When taking down the jib, it is noticeable that the guide rail is missing on the small cruiser. However, the headsail can be sheeted tightly with the two taped blocks, and the tacking angle of 90 degrees is also suitable; at 3 Beaufort, almost five and a half knots can be achieved upwind. An exemplary detail, worth copying. On the one hand, Milos celebrated precision and bought a laser spirit level right at the start, used it to set up the frames and drilled the keel fin with its help. When it turned out that the port stringer was three millimetres longer than its counterpart, he called Pilo in despair. "Three millimetres," he said, "that's nothing." Precision was one of Milos' maxims.
On the other hand, the two bikers planned using the agile system, so they set a launch date instead of continuing to muddle along in classic project mode until the last block had been installed. Okay, five days ago was also the third planned launch date for the two of them, because six months of construction - initial planning - was too ambitious. At that time, only the mast was still to be ordered.
Change of plan due to the budget
So they went to the Hanseboot, but all offers were double their budget, 3000 euros were planned. Once again they called Pilo. "I had a bad conscience as time went on, he offered to help the self-builders, but I had really exhausted it," says Milos. In any case, the money for the mast was missing, Pilo spent some time on calculations and drawings and got back to us: "We are now switching to plan B." "What plan B?" asked Milos. "When I heard there was now a wooden mast, I thought, nice, a new challenge!" The larch slats cost 200 euros and the hire car with trailer coupling 200 euros to get them home. The mast is around 30 per cent heavier than an aluminium profile, calculated Pilo, Milos never weighed it, it is a "two men mast", a mast that requires two people to carry it.
What is also important for the success of such a project: maintaining social contacts. Milos kept in touch with the local bikers and promised beer when it was time to turn over the finished hull. "They came, all petrolheads with long hair, rivets on their cowls and bulging eyes." Before the self-builders could organise the helpers, they had balanced the small cruiser hull, which weighed just 300 kilos. "We couldn't even take any photos. We then spent the time we had saved partying," says Kerstin.
Helpers drive progress of the project
In order to make progress, the two stuck to the construction plan, but Milos occasionally broke the rule. He now folds out another of these quirks from the cockpit side walls. Four seats make for a harbour lounge or additional bays high up on the wind. Unfortunately for Milos, the cushions are missing. "We ordered them made to measure online, but delivery times are very long during the coronavirus pandemic." Put in the water? Nevertheless!
Back at the jetty, the boat's guide: the two show where the ceramics department - currently still an empty compartment - will be located to starboard of the small cruiser's mast base. They open the lockers under the forward berth, where the two 12 V batteries are now located, which, connected in series, supply 74 ampere-hours of 24 V power to the small motor. And they ensure that the water pass, which initially dipped a little aft, now corresponds exactly with the water position.
Continue through the currently unhinged companionway door into the lounge-like cockpit. Open the hatches, this is where the smartphone or shackles go, the suitcase-sized box under the tiller is a good footrest in the wind and will later house the life raft. Is this additional storage compartment here for the fenders? "Fenders! Right, where to put the fenders? Now I know - thank you!" Milos is open-minded, always on the lookout, but Kerstin would also like to put it down again straight away. "I still have that little girl in me and love fantastic worlds and everything that is removed from reality." Kerstin has a doctorate in animation technology and holds a patent for virtual pedestrians. She lives by the Generation X maxim of seeking fulfilment in her job, or rather, leaving no gap and certainly no discrepancy between work and life. It's a great Oktoberfest! A safe bet.
A look on board the small cruiser"Alcedo"
On to the rig: the self-milled wooden groove, sliders and the fathead sail with the flared spreader batten in the top, they fit together here, and the mainsail is easy to hoist and lower. Milos, who was well underway during mast construction, made mast fittings from stainless steel profiles, sanded and polished them, eye-catchers. Just like the attractive carbon fibre fittings on the main boom, which he laminated to fit the wood perfectly using interlayer foil. Sewing upholstery covers? There are YouTube tutorials for that too. The two of them still need a trailer, so they googled how to make one themselves.
And the noise from the keel and rudder? Milos fitted PTFE washers ("Teflon") between the rudder fittings. In addition, catamaran sailors on the jetty advised that wheels on cars are not usually suspended in parallel, but have toe-in or toe-out depending on the drive. "We have now also implemented this on the rudder blades and it has helped a lot," says Kerstin. "Well, the keel is a bit tricky, it needs a bit of air there so that it goes up and down," Pilo explains the other humming problem, "but owners have told me that the noise disappears with a little time and algae growth." Also a kind of bionics.
First destination: Of course, to Cristian in Sardinia, where their small cruiser was born. With home-baked rosemary bread. Dog is already a dog. Pretty plucky.
Technical data small cruiser Idea 21"Alcedo"
- Designer: Cirstian Pilo
- Hull length: 6.70 m
- Width: 2.50 m
- Draught (keel up): 1.65 m (0.52 m)
- Displacement: 1.2 tonnes
- Ballast/proportion: 0.27 t/23 %
- Sail area: 17.6 m² (main)/9.3 m² (jib)
