(B)LOGBOOK

Around 2010, I unexpectedly learned about a boat builder near my hometown on the Austrian border. On my very first visit, I asked the question, which then became almost a running gag. Seeing only boats under restoration in the workshop, I asked: do you also make new boats? After a year and a half of apprenticeship, I decided to build one myself...

I learned so much from restoration. Artisanal boatbuilding is the culmination of generations of dedicated master craftsmen who, with limited means, humbly built upon one another, perfecting mature, and ultimately profoundly beautiful techniques and solutions. Restoring what was once Meta, then Onice, and finally Brigantes,means drawing on a refinement that stretches back centuries. Ships that for generations have transported useful and important cargoes, improving from generation to generation, moving from wood to iron and then steel until their culmination in the early twentieth century. Picking up where we left off, then looking for a way forward. Learning the forms, especially, learning the approach, the tricks, sticking to very low-impact materials and solutions tailored to human needs, for humankind.

Perhaps the most profound lesson is summed up in a quote from Conrad Lühring, the builder of the Brigantes: "If it pleases the eye, it will sail well." Even for my own approach to sailing cargo, I was considering a new build when I stumbled upon the opportunity of this true pearl of merchant shipping. Finding a vessel with a hull and hold that had not been altered or transformed—after all, into a floating hotel—was love at first sight, a call to action not to be ignored. Starting from there, a form perfect for the purpose without the aid of materials and technologies provided by the "megamachine" with all the footprint it has behind it. Ultimately, it's about building a bridge, bypassing the "fathers" to reconnect with the "grandparents" and even "great-grandparents," the Joseph Conrads, and their spirits, abandoned and betrayed by a modernity tainted by almost infinite energy and shortcuts.

A new construction in a traditional style is perhaps an even more challenging undertaking, as demonstrated by the story of Ceiba, a wonderful project born in the same years as Brigantes in Costa Rica, now unfortunately stalled and of which little news emerges. We sincerely hope that the visionaries of Ceiba, as perhaps is happening here, will unravel the knot and complete what has been achieved so far with titanic effort. Because the future must see new ships, beyond the recovery of what remains of the glorious past of sailing ships, and it is up to the visionaries and pioneers to decide in what spirit they will create them.