Birth of an idea.
Three years ago, a Russian or Ukranian sailor, named Eugeny, of 68 years old, stopped at La Paloma and Buceo ports in Uruguay during his round the world cruise in a little sailing boat, "SAID", which a length of only 3.70 m.
Eugeny completed the circumnavigation last year (it was his second one).
Such feat hit us very close for we had knew him and his boat previously, and showed that for a good seaworthy sailing ship it is neither essential to invest important amounts of money nor big dimensions of the vessel. The basic point is the bouyancy principle, plus certain capacity to sail forward with an appropriate rig.
At the beginning of 2004 we read in the web page of the well known Zealander sailing boat designer John Welsford, that he was working on a design for an South Australian, who had in mind and wished a low cost boat, sailing simplicity and appropriate to face heavy sea and winds, so that she allowed her crew to remain inside and offshore when there was bad weather, as there are few sheltered places or harbours.
She was Swaggie.
The initial drawings put by John W, in his web page trapped us. She seemed to be a seaworthy boat, with good accommodation, steerable from inside, low cost, simple, with junk rig which always attracted me although I never sailed with one, and with a simple and made it yourself wind vane self steering system.
My family and friends told me that I was mad, and the first photo related with this project was taken the same day that I showed them the first drawing of Swaggie, in January 2004. In order to make the pic more realistic, they put two or three bolts in my hat, meaning that I was Gyro Gearloose like, the crazy inventor of Disney stories (the truth is that a good Argentinian friend has in property such nickname, but this will be subject of another story).
In April 2004 John W. finished the plans and almost immediately we bought them.
Nowadays the Uruguayan Swaggie apparently is the one most advanced in being built in the world.
The builder
The builder is Federico "Fiqui" García, a Uruguayan naval carpenter and a well known musician.
He lives with his family in Playa Verde, a nice beach at the outfall of the River Plate (río de la Plata) in the South Atlantic Ocean, near the port of Piriápolis, Uruguay.
In such heavenly place he is building the Uruguayan Swaggie,and he combines this artistic task with others such as playing the flute and drink the guaraní originated “mate”.
(mate can be seen in the pic, aside the glass bottle; it is a “kind” of tea to be drunk with hot water through a special tube named “bombilla”)