And, The Adventure Begins!

From Mike Coleman – his experience deciding what boat to build. To go simple or go complicated with the plan and building choice. How much performance and bang for the buck.

About Myself

My name is Mike Coleman.  I am 37 years old.  And, I live in Greenville, South Carolina. Always being one to seek out the next adventure, I found boat building and sailing a few months back

I have a full time job that has been taking up some of my weekends for the last few weeks.  However, I have most Saturdays and Sundays off.  I get 3 weeks of vacation a year. I also get a lot of holidays and long weekends.  This time off is the most valuable asset that I have.

I have absolutely no background as a builder

You will all be happy to hear that I have absolutely no background as a builder.  Other than a bird house or a pine derby car, I have never built anything of consequence.  I will be leaning heavily on my father and the Michael Storer Boat Building Community, for help and guidance throughout the process.

There is one last thing that you should know about me before we get started.  I didn’t grow up sailing.  In fact, until a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t know anything at all about sailing.  I decided that I would sail the Texas 200 in 2013.  Then, I decided how to make it happen.

The Plan – these little boats do the most amazing things

This all started when I stumbled across  Michael Storer’s PDRacer (Now the Goose and OzRacer) videos on YouTube.

I laughed my tail off at the thought of building a sailboat for a couple of hundred dollars. Then, joining my local yacht club.  At first, that was all that I thought about the idea.  However, I kept coming back to the videos of these little boats doing the most amazing things.  Eventually, I did a Google search for “Texas 200” .  That was the beginning of the whole thing for me.  My sense of adventure took over.  And, I quickly progressed from thoughts of building an 8 foot box, to planning to build the much larger and more complicated Goat Island Skiff.  My idea was no longer an idea.  It had become a plan.

Now, If you’re wondering why I’m back to building a rectangular boat, it’s because I had enough common sense to seek advice before I took the next step.  I grabbed my credit card and prepared to purchase the plans for the Goat Island Skiff.  Then, I backed off.

The Goat Island Skiff.

Back to basics – thinking simple

I sent an email to Michael Storer himself.  I told him my background and he suggested that I do the 12′ Goose instead.  He told me that he thought that it would take a while for a non-sailor to be able to handle the Goat.  And, since swimming the Texas 200 was out of the question, I took his advise.  It was the next day that I realized that putting me on the smaller, simpler boat had cost Mr. Storer $85.  He could have easily given me the go ahead to buy the more expensive plans.  After all, that was what I wanted to do.  But, he didn’t do that.  I immediately purchased the Goose plans and haven’t looked back.

At this point, I hope to participate in 3 events:  The 2012 Sail Oklahoma, The 2013 Texas 200, and the 2014 Everglades Challenge.  But first, I have a boat to build.

More information on the Oz Goose Simple Sailboat.

To keep in contact with more people building the Oz Goose around the world we have a number of groups – see the menu at the top.

But the easiest place to find out what is happening is our facebook group.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/opengoose/