Building your Dream Boat!!
by David Econopouly

It started off as a dream, like most of my adventures.....build a boat with my girlfriend, Carolyn, my good friend Rod who I attended High School with in Greece and his girlfriend, Pam. Once the 53 foot ketch was completed we would sail down to the Caribbean and set up a sailing/scuba charter company.

We got as far as buying the plans....and then the bad news hit.....Pam was pregnant. That put a crimp in the plans and when Carolyn told me she didn't want to move south with me to build the boat....that pretty much put an end to the 53-footer.

I moved down to LI, New York alone and began working a series of jobs. Dreams die hard for me...and there was always that itch to build the boat and sail off. I read all the books I could on boatbuilding.....talked to anyone I met on a sailboat or had experience building them.... read countless catalogues with boat plans....

I had very little money and no experience building anything save a little birdhouse in the backyard and a couple of shelves where my dad's dishwasher used to be. What I did have was the desire to build a boat...and so I began...

I bought a set of plans and tacked them on my attic ceiling above my bed... before going to bed at night and after waking up in the morning, I would stare at the plans...trying to understand each step before I reached it.

My big move came when I bought a friend's VW for $1300 and sold it for $2100. With the money I bought lumber to build a temporary structure, and enough resin and fiberglass to get the project underway....

The following 30+ pictures document the 4 1/2 year process of building Blue Winds.....