Zeal to pursue the coveted goal doesn’t faint, no matter how long it takes to achieve it.
Owen Warboys – a man from Hordle, Hampshire proved it when launched his DIY boat that took over three decades building it in his mum’s garden. Christened as "Wight Dolphin", the work on this 40ft long sloop weighing over 18 tonne yacht started in 1982 at his mother Edith’s house. After completion Owen Warboys’ home-made boat has made it to the sea.
"Wight Dolphin" was built by Owen from the scratch with sheets of steel and pieces of wood and the construction was marked with hours and hours of welding and grinding. As the project neared completion, Owen worked virtually every weekend for three years to finish the job. It took Owen a decade to build the hull alone. However, the hard work and patience finally paid and the boat has a galley, bedrooms, showers and toilets and a diesel engine that was brand new when it was fitted – 12 years ago.
The 66-year-old started work on the 12m (40-ft) sloop in his mother’s back garden in 1982. He told her it would take only five years but, after suffering ‘a few problems’, and that was before he had to work out how to get it out of the back garden, his project spiralled into a mammoth project spanning nearly three decades.
When he finished, a year after his mother, Edith, died last year aged 102 (he had to delay selling her house), he was left with the head-scratching task of getting the 18-tonne yacht out of the garden. So Owen Warboys nervously looked on as a crane lifted 40ft in the air with a huge crane over his late mother’s detached house on to a lorry to transport it to a marina on the Solent, where, to Owen’s delight, it floated and didn’t show any signs of leakage when it was tested.
Now he and his long-suffering wife, Anne, 65, plan to go on a cruise in the Mediterranean.
He added: “Once the mast and sails are fitted we’re heading to warmer climes.”
Thirty years are too long a time to hunt only one goal and one would have lost the patience in the middle.
The retired marine engineer from Hordle, near Lymington, Hants, said:
"I am so relieved it’s finished," he said. "There were times when I thought it would never end but I’m the sort of person who likes to finish something once I’ve started."
Benjamin Franklin's quotation : “Energy and persistence conquer all things.”
Hats off and kudos to Owen’s perseverance!
Links :
- Telegraph UK
- similar story : a 1/8 scale model of the Majesty of the Seas (mini) was built in Morsbach, by François Zanella a retired French mine worker and was launched in 2005 after 11 years of work
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