Neil Hawkesford

A tale of productive insanity

It’s nearly twenty years since a rag-eared ring bound little book fell out of a box I was unpacking.

I’d been working in a kind of numbness, trying to stay busy, trying to ignore the shit my mind was attempting to feed me.

Then there it was, like a beam of sunlight piercing the darkness. I smiled for the first time in ages. I picked it up, sat in my chair and started flicking through the pages.

A spark flashed.

The fire caught.

It saved me.

Within days, I’d chosen one of the designs; a Tiki 38 catamaran. 38ft (11.6m) length, 22ft (6.2m) wide, 3.5 tons (3000 kg) weight, capable of crossing oceans. Within a week, I had the study plans, the week after that I ordered the full build plans. Several hundred pounds I could ill afford. But I’d made a decision and I needed to commit.

I’d no money for materials.

I’d no place to build.

I’d no idea what I was doing.

I just knew I had to find a way.

There’s a well-known quote from W. H. Murray the Scottish mountaineer and author, it goes like this:

Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would not otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man would have dreamed would come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.

Over the months and years that followed the truth in those words would be proved time and time again.

By the autumn of 2006 I’d found an old barn to rent close to where I worked and lived. I’d scraped together enough money to buy a pallet of plywood. I laid a chipboard floor, got my tools together and one cold, dark December night I cut the first two pieces of plywood (the skegs).

December 2006. The first pieces

Somehow, someway, I’d started building a boat. I started blogging. ‘The Gleda Project’ had begun.

Everyone thought I was crazy; They were right. A sane sensible person plans, budgets, makes pros and cons lists, thinks things through.

I didn’t do any of that, I just started.

That’s probably why it took me eight years and nearly 5,000 hours of work to get her on the water. It was a period of productive insanity.

Fatigue, illness, lack of money, work, family and more slowed me down or stopped me altogether. One year I only managed 46 hours of work on the boat.

Here’s another quote I learned the truth of. It’s from Arthur Ransome’s book Racundra’s Last Cruise written in 1928.

When it comes, the desire to build a boat is one of those that cannot be resisted. It begins as a little cloud on a serene horizon. It ends by covering the whole sky so that you think of nothing else.

If I’d thought about the project too much before I’d started, well, I’d never have started.

But here’s what’s interesting. Only a few months in and with not a lot to show, I’d already reached the point where abandoning the whole idea would have given me far more pain than continuing.

For years the goal stubbornly remained too far over the horizon to see. The work became the goal, step-by-step, doing what I could when I could. Each piece of wood cut, each pot of epoxy mixed, each inch of fibreglass sanded.

2013 - The hulls joined for the first time

But that said, on many dark wet, windy nights in the barn a vision came into my head. A vision of this thing I was creating floating on the open ocean, carrying me safely to new and exciting places, giving me adventures and experiences that would last a lifetime.

I’m proud to say dear reader that my dream became a reality.

Gleda on the Portuguese side of the Rio Guadiana in 2016

Gleda is no longer mine. I sold her in 2018 to a German guy who’d followed the build since the start.

He and his wife are in Indonesia now. They’ve crossed the Atlantic and Pacific oceans on her.

I wish I could time-travel back twenty years. I wish I could find that crazy guy kneeling on the floor of a cold dark barn holding two pieces of plywood. I wish I could whisper in his ear, tell him his dream would come true, tell him he’d pass it on to others.

Building a boat taught me many things. One lesson in particular stays with me.

Whatever it is you want to do, start. Because you never know where it’ll finish.

Gleda in the Pacific 2026 (bottom centre) - Photo courtesy of Michael Stephani

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