Second Wind: The Tale of a Sailor

- "Second Wind, the Tale of a Sailor" is brought to you in part, by the following sponsors.

Canon.

(upbeat music) And by Sunbrella.

Sunbrella Marine fabrics have been used around the world, for over 50 years.

From small ski boats to sailboats, to yachts.

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Designed to be fade, (mumbles) and weather resistant.

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North sails.

We're committed to helping sailors maximize their sails performance and lifespan.

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And by, Edson.

For those who want to see what is beyond the horizon, and know that turning back home isn't an option.

Edson, since 1859 making adventures happen.

- 29 teams from 50 nations, make that last minute preparations at Gosport Marina, for the start of the greatest yacht race in the world.

The Third Whitbread Round the World Race.

A 27,000 mile marathon, starting and finishing at Portsmouth, with stop overs at Cape Town, Auckland and Mar del Plata in Argentina.

For the five matches like flyer, all competing for line honors, the voyage will last seven months, and eight or more for the smallest yachts.

- I respect the ocean, the beauty, the vastness, the energy and the calm.

It's almost like another planet, a force like no other.

I've logged thousands of miles at sea, many crossings of the Atlantic, the Indian, and the Pacific oceans.

And I just love being out there.

It challenges you, mentally and physically.

If you don't know what you're doing out there, it'll eat you alive.

- The race was on.

- My peak that I wanted to climb and achieve was The Whitbread Round the World Race, which is today called the Volvo Ocean Race.

And I thought that's what I wanna do.

I love long hauls at sea of two, three, four weeks at a time.

What's the biggest, highest mountain in that arena?

Is The Whitbread Round the World Race.

- Sailing is problem solving.

Racing sailboat, sailing a sailboat is just sort of an endless stream of problems that you need to solve.

- You've gotta have a good sailing skill, so you can trim sails, you can drive, you can sail a boat, but you can also repair things.

There's not enough room to just take an engineer, you've got to be a sailor as well.

So really important to have two skills, to sail and to be able to fix stuff.

- If he was playing football, you'd call him a dual threat, he'd play offense and defense.

So he has this incredible heritage of sailing around the world, on one of the most famous boats ever.

- After rounding the final mark before the finish, everyone was excited.

Conny Van Rietschoten and his team had achieved all that they'd hoped for, and for the second time.

- In taking line honors, Flyer had been first into every port, and have established a new world record for the voyage, of 120 days 12 hours.

- We had a fantastic year of sailing behind us.

It was marvelous to achieve the goals we had set.

On the other hand, we were all rather sad because we knew that this is the end of a beautiful year.

- I think the rare part of honor is very few people know how great a boat racer, how many offshore miles he had before he decided to become really one of the premier of boating photographer.

Kind of create an industry in a way.

One of the premier yachting photographers in history.

- I bought myself a simple SLR camera, got a couple of rolls of film and just for myself.

When I had to go up to the mast to do some maintenance work, or to the end of the spinnaker pole, I take my camera with me, when I finished working I click, click, click.

I transitioned into the creative side of photography, but in a field that I knew well.

- I don't know that I could necessarily describe his style.

He's good at the action shots and part of what makes them able to get a shot is knowing how to anticipate it.

And anticipating the shot really requires you having been there.

- You're on the starting line and one boat shifts right, the other boat shifts left.

You've kind of seen this movie before.

He's a step ahead.

And I think that's what makes a great photographer.

- My camera is taking me to the far reaches of the globe.

Almost entirely by sailing and on sailboats.

But it's always been on somebody else's boat.

I wanted my own sailboat.

I was ready to do a refit on an old sailboat and call it Snoek.

Let me take you back to the beginning.

I come from a family of sailors in Holland.

My grandfather sailed, my father and my mom sailed.

We moved to South Africa.

Even before I could walk, I was on boats and sailing.

So here's a shot of my parents and myself on the ship in 1959, leaving Holland.

A shot of the Dutch immigrant ship Groote Beer leaving Amsterdam.

Yours truly at the wheel of the mighty Groote Beer.

We lived and grew up in a small fishing village called Hout Bay, which is about 20 minutes outside of Cape Town, but a beautiful small little settlement in the mountains on the coast.

We loved ships, sailing, my dad always had a small boat.

And so that was my introduction to sailing from day one, as a small young kid.

Stuffed in my life jacket, I was put on the boat and then we went.

I loved going down to the harbor when I was in my early teens on a bicycle.

The smell of the fishing factory, the fleet, the noise, poking around on the nets and just playing.

And of course, one thing led to another and I asked for a ride one day went fishing with these guys, and I was like, yes, this is great.

I just loved being outside and feeling the boats, the movement of the boats and all that stuff.

And really my passion for the ocean started right there and then.

One of my dad's friends, Elton Mahler, called one Saturday morning and said, "hey, I need somebody to help me on this boat, "I've just launched, a 25 foot sailboat.

"Is your boy interested?"

And my dad shouted "hey, Onne, "Elton wants you to go sailing with him".

I said, no I'm not interested.

Well my dad kept talking on the phone to Elton for about half an hour, and in that time it was mauling through my brain, and I was thinking, what else am I gonna do?

I like sailing.

I like the sea.

I shout Pa, he's still there?

He says, "yeah", tell him I'll come.

Elton and Cynthia's Fifi was a cruising boat.

Very comfortable, small, only 25 feet.

And here's an early shot of Elton and Cynthia, on their first boat, where we weren't obviously sailing and cruising before I got involved with racing.

And this is their first little boat Fifi, the 25 footer that he built.

Here is a shot that sums up my passion for fishing and working on the fishing boats with the black guys, the Africans.

And this is in Hout Bay where we grew up, this fishing village.

And I was working on these boats as a white kid, the only white kid, the only white guy on that boat.

And it was very rare to get somebody like me working on those boats.

So here was a very interesting time for me to grow up, during apartheid.

- The policy of apartheid, literally separateness, has been elevated by the government of South Africa, from a mere theory of racial superiority to the law of the land.

As the late Prime Minister, Dr. Henrik Verwoerd put it, we want to keep South Africa white.

Keeping it white can mean only one thing, namely, white domination, not leadership, not guidance but control supremacy.

- I straightaway got a spot for a day trip with one of the fishing boats, and it was all colored and blacks no white people.

And to me, it was so cool because you really got to know these people.

And you're sitting next to them fishing and working your fishing lines.

And I come back from the end of the day, just totally fired up and excited about what I done.

And my mates or friends would say, "Wow, you went on that fishing boat, "you didn't get seasick?

"And how many other white people are there?"

And I said none.

They said, "wow, you crazy?"

I said, Why?

I mean, they're great people.

It's not dangerous.

They're just like you and me.

High School was a disaster.

When it came to maths and science, and English I battled.

And I battled to the point where the teacher would scream at me "Van Der Wal, you're useless, "you better off going and working on a farm, "what are you doing in class?"

I was kept back several years, in various grades and it just wasn't good.

And at times, I just say goodbye I'm going to school and take a left to the harbor, instead of a right to the school bus.

Well, eventually, that caught up with me and things weren't great.

A report from 1970, all about failing and most disappointing and a disaster, and all that good stuff.

So, not very inspiring.

But deep down I thought, yeah, you can carry on whatever you like, I know I'm not stupid, I'm not dumb.

But this is just not my shtick.

I'm not interested in science and math.

There's other things that I love and have a passion for.

My dad one day came across a really good apprentice school, a trade school.

And this is not for high school kids, but it's more at the sort of the college age.

So kids go either to college, or they go to a trade school.

And my dad through his work, came across this trade school and said, "this is a good thing, "you should really think about this.

"I would love you to do this.

"Get something behind you.

"You're good with your hands, "I think this would really work".

- If you like to work with your hands, if you like to make things, if you are not afraid of oil, grease and dirt, if you like machinery, you can become a machinist.

- So you learn to work on a lathe, where turn metal parts, and you also work on a milling machine where you cut certain parts, and you work on a bench to file and drill.

So you making parts for machines.

During my apprenticeship, I became more and more passionate about sailing, enjoyed sailing with Elton and Cynthia.

But next door to us was the same boat, but a certain Dr. Mike Dupree, who was racing his boat, and one day he gave a little knock on the hull and says, "hey, I see you're running around and doing a lot of work, "with Elton and taking care of his boats "and do you wanna come racing with us?"

I said, racing, I've never raced before, he says, "well, come on over".

An early picture of sailing with the doctor, with Mike Debree, and one of his daughters.

Look at the hair.

And this is great.

I learned a ton.

I ended up working on the floor deck and steering, and at times racing the boat on my own.

He was busy there's times he couldn't sail.

And he says, "Onne, will you sail a boat today?"

I said yeah, sure.

And after sailing with Mike, I got an opportunity to do a transatlantic race, on a 72 footer.

And that race started in January.

For me to be able to go on this boat (mumbles) on this transatlantic race, I'd been given a good spot on this boat.

I was a watch captain.

I was starting helmsmen.

I just had to go.

I couldn't say no because of my apprenticeship, so passing the three year test was huge.

I cut off two years of my study time but more importantly, I could give the green flag to the owner of the boat and said, I am coming with you.

I'm your starting helmsmen, and I'm your watch captain.

This is the start of the first transatlantic race, from Cape Town to Uruguay.

And here I am at the helm.

I'm wearing the white cap in the middle of the boat, steering the boat at the start.

We spent about two months in South America and then the boat had to go back to Cape Town.

But by this time it was fall in the Southern Ocean, not a very nice time to be down there.

And these are the conditions that we ran into, very big storm, a lot of wind 60, 70, 80 knots, huge seas 30, 40, 50 foot seas.

Just another idea for the ocean can look like when it gets pretty riled up.

So it was a survival condition.

There was a time when I thought, wonder if we're gonna get home.

Big, big stuff, your first transatlantic.

Don't see land at all for 20 days.

Sailing at night sailing during the day, it was beautiful.

I just groveled in it.

I just loved being out there.

Life on the ocean was what I thought it could be.

And the seed was planted at that point.

My Everest, my peak that I wanted to climb and achieve was The Whitbread Round the World Race, which is today called the Volvo Ocean Race.

And I thought, that's what I wanna do.

I love long hauls at sea of two, three, four weeks at a time.

What's the biggest, highest mountain in that arena?

Is The Whitbread Round the World Race.

Here's the men that I needed to convince to take me along.

So here's a picture of Conny van Rietschoten, who won in '77, and then again did it in '81.

And I was very keen to join this boat in 1981.

And I looked at this guy and I said, here is the Sir Edmund Hillary of sailing.

He's nailing it.

He's winning this race.

And I kept my ocean racing going in other parts of the world.

And I thought, I'm gonna build up my CV, to a point where I can approach him and say, Conny, I'm your man, I wanna race with you.

I sent him a letter.

And I said, I've done a lot of racing, I've done this and that, I wanna be part of your program.

And he sent me a telex to meet at a yacht club in Marblehead.

And we met there and we had a great dinner, and he showed me the drawings because the boat is still on paper at that point.

And we discussed the whole boat, a 76 foot custom built sloop for this race.

I was like, oh my goodness, this is like my dream, this is it.

And at the end of the dinner, he walked me to my car and he stuck his hand out and said, "this is great.

"You've got these ocean going skills and you can sail, "and you are good with people on long haul, "but I need, I'm looking for an electrician, "I'm looking for a rigger, "I'm looking for a doctor, "I'm looking for a navigator "and an engineer".

And I said, engineer.

I said, I just finished a three year apprenticeship where I can make things, I can fix things, I can machine things.

He says, "that's very interesting".

Quite honestly, I think without that apprenticeship, I would have not got onto Flyer and Conny would not have given me the nod.

I had to take care of the motor, I had to take care of the hydraulic systems.

In the beginning, I helped with the rig and with a winches.

And every single thing that had to be done and fitted, and fixed, I understood because of my apprenticeship days.

I had always dabbled in photography, and I enjoyed that first transatlantic that I did to Uruguay.

I remember looking through somebody's camera and thinking, wow, that's really cool how you can sort of set something up and shoot it and capture that that scene, that moment.

And that always stuck with me until I eventually bought myself a simple SLR camera.

Got a couple of rolls of film and just for myself, when I had to go up the mast to do some maintenance work, or to the end of the spinnaker pole.

I take my camera with me when I finished working, I click, click, click.

This is one of the very early pictures of Flyer that I got published.

And this was coming across the Atlantic, heading to Marblehead on a trial, or as a sail trial, crew trial.

And I got onto the end of the boom and just love the shot looking into the cockpit, to show the guys trimming sails and working above.

So we eventually arrived in Marblehead Mass.

And that's where the sailmaker had his base and we had our sails from this particular manufacturer.

And we were on a mooring bowl in Marblehead Harbor, and I heard this knock on the hull, and I looked over and there was four guys in suits.

And they said, "we are the publishers and the editor of Sail Magazine", one of the premier sailing magazines in the world.

I said, well, they wanted..

They said, "we wanna see your boat, it's famous".

I said come on board.

And I showed them the hull.

I was obviously knew the boat very well inside out, and most of the crew were ashore.

And so I took 45 minutes and showed every bit and piece.

And at the end of the trip, I said, well, I've taken the time to show you our boat.

Would you have a moment to look at what I've created with my camera, seeing that you guys are a magazine?

And I took my slides which were in in a sleeve and Keith Taylor, the editor, took them out and had a look, and looked at me, "this is interesting work.

"Can we take these with us?"

So they disappeared in their little rowing boat.

And a couple days later, they got hold of me and said, "We want you to shoot for us during The Round the World Race on Flyer for Sail Magazine.

"What do you think?"

I said, well, I'm psyched, but I got to talk to the boss.

And I said Conny sails wants me to do this and this and that.

And he says, "Right on, what else do you need?".

So he made sure I had another couple lenses and more film, and they gave me film.

And that's really how I started shooting in a little bit more of a, shall we say professional world.

So this is a fairly important shot, in that again in the Southern Ocean, up at the end of the spinnaker pole had to do some maintenance work with some of the rigging.

Took my camera up said to the guys hold on, just give me a second here.

How little was I to know that it became a cover of Sail Magazine, my first cover.

And the first of many I can happily say, and proudly say.

Early days, shooting, getting the feel of things.

This is actually on The Round the World Race and just shows you, here I am doing my thing.

After we won The Round the World Race, on Flyer, I'd obviously been sailing and racing professionally for a while.

And you get to a point where you wanna have a nice warm bunk and your own house, and a car, and all that stuff.

And even the most simplest things like a bank account, and a place where the magazines could come to my address where I could read them.

If you were on boats, in those days, you had no fixed abode.

You move from one boat to the next.

And I got a little tired of that, and I thought I'm ready to have a little shack ashore and a place where I can get some friends.

And so that worked nicely, I was ready for that, and the photography came along at the same time and together, I just sort of worked at that.

I get into photography full time, I settle in Newport in 1987.

And I start my business.

And here's a shot of yours truly at the computer, early days in computers.

But I still have slides on the light table editing, getting things out, ready to send to the magazine.

The magazine assignments are great and I've got my name out there, cause you get your byline photo by.

But I was aiming at the advertising and that's really where I could make a good living.

And here's my first promo, my mailing card that I sent out to potential art buyers, art directors, magazine people.

I transitioned into the creative side of photography, but in a field that I knew well.

I just had to hone up or bone up on my photography skills, the technical.

I felt I had an eye, but I just had to learn a little bit more about all these type of things.

So it was a fun thing for me to get into the field of photography, and work in a field that I really understood well.

I had a focus, my photography.

From 1987 I thought this is what I wanna do, and I want to work hard at it, and I was driven.

I was really looking in my life for something that I could do on my own.

The sailing was great and all kinds of other opportunities, but I thought I wanna do something that is mine, that I can really sink my teeth into, and work, and grow and be successful.

And that's how it started, in '87.

- Onne's reputation preceded him.

He was the guy who took the beautiful pictures, of the pretty boats.

Everegatta I was sailing in.

Onne was there you can see the on assignment boat with Onne taking pictures.

- My wife Tenley came to me one day and said, "you've got a great commercial photography business going.

"But the public cannot see your work, "they can't buy it.

"They occasionally see it in magazines.

"But why don't we do a gallery, and I'll run it, "and I'll get it all set up".

- I was very apprehensive about partnering in something, but I always felt that the public should be able to buy Onne's work.

If I thought if we got to start a gallery, I could just sell to the client and hang the artwork.

And that was it.

He had a great reputation.

And he was in a lot of magazines.

His name was well known.

If we hung a shingle out, I had no doubt that people would be coming up the stairs and into the gallery to see what we had to offer.

- And then today, 17 years later, that gallery is flourishing and doing very well.

And we have lots of big beautiful pieces on the wall and it cranks right along.

I've been very fortunate that with my camera, I've been able to travel to the far corners of the world, but it's always been on other people's boats.

I wanted to get my own sailboat.

And I said, we've got to get a boat.

And here's an opportunity to get an old boat that most people would say that's junk, dump it, go and buy a new boat.

I said no, I just love to fix up an old classic boat.

And I started looking for a boat.

And talking to a mate of mine Ezra Smith about, what do you think, I went about finding old cruising boats that I can fix up.

And Ezra said to me, "a Pierson 36, go and find them.

"They were built in 1972.

"They built about 100 of them and go and poke around".

And I looked at four of them.

And the first one was in Newport.

Structurally, I found out in very good shape, but cosmetically It was very tired.

So it needed fixing up, and that's eventually the boat that I bought.

So here's a picture of Snoek.

One of the first times I saw her on the morning, and I just loved her lines.

You can see she has sweet lines.

You would never say this is a 1972 boat.

It looks more like a 1985 boat.

She was very much ahead of her time, in the way Bill Shaw designed her.

So I went down below, I asked the owner do you mind if I just take a couple of snaps, just for my own record.

And as you can see, the cabin sole, or the floor is pretty badly.

Everywhere you walk, you get white paint, flakes of white paint on your shoes.

And while I was down below one of the leaves of the table just fell right off.

And all the cushions just really smelt.

The boat was tired.

I lifted up the floorboard, looked down there, was just a black liquid sloshing around in the bilge.

- So Onne told me about this boat, it was on a morning in Newport, and he wanted me to take a look at it.

He had gone for sail and he liked it.

And as we went by, I saw that it was very tired.

So I went down below and it had this very distinct odor, which I was a bit concerned about.

And we went for a test sail on what was to become Snoek.

And we were sailing in Newport under the bridge, and I was steering the boat, and I just had this feeling, the feeling was, this is it.

It's great.

It's Perfect.

Look, it's tired, it smells, it stinks.

My wife's gonna hate it, but I know I can fix it up.

By the time we got off the boat, we'd had a deal, we had a handshake and I knew this was it.

This was the mission, to rebuild and redo this boat.

So she's a 36 foot boat, built in 1972.

You get the idea here, 36 feet long accommodation, you can sleep, you can cook, you can shower, you can do everything on board.

You get another idea here of the dimensions and the size of the boat.

She's a comfortable cruising boat.

Pearson built a bunch of quality boats in the 70s, all the way into the 90s, and I bought a very early one from 1972.

And she was built for cruising and for racing.

- Pearson cousins definitely popularized the recreational sailboat.

They were very traditional, very classic in their lines, nothing too radical.

Just good looking boats with great proportions.

These guys, the Pearson cousins, Pearson Yachts, they figured out how to build things solid.

These were boats that stand the test of time.

- Pearson was kind of created, in a sense mass production before there was such a thing.

If these were still hand laid, called chopper guns, they would shoot the inside of molds, with guns, that would just spray fiberglass and resin.

And that would be thick, like three quarter inch thick holes and these big heavy boats.

- Here's the core.

So this is of the deck.

And you can see there's three quarter inches of plywood, and then a quarter inch of fiberglass on either side.

So you're looking at a total of an inch and a quarter, thickness of deck, bulletproof.

Never find that a new boats.

- That's why they're all still around.

That's why Onne has a boat right now.

Is because they were so literally bulletproof when they were built.

They're not going anywhere for a long, long time.

So that structure and the creation of that structure was born right here in Rhode Island.

- Bristol specifically is a Mecca for boat building.

Anything from little wooden boats near the Harris Museum to America's Cup boats, that are being built down the road, around the corner from us here.

- Well Bristol really is the cradle of civilization from from the boat building design, and boat building perspective in the US.

Where we sit today in Bristol, Rhode Island, is the original site of the Airsoft manufacturing company.

- This is not unlike an old house renovation where the old house was so over built, that the structure and the bones of it are gonna be around forever.

You can't build a boat like that anymore, because it's not cost effective.

Old boats just never die.

- This was not a complete disaster this boat.

Structurally she was in very good shape.

I could say it was just a cosmetic refit.

- Here we hold the boat out of Clark's and Jamestown Clark's boat yard, was the place where we started everything.

Adrian, my youngest boy, and I went through the whole boat and decided to just get rid of the garbage.

- He bought Snoek and decided to take the entire winter off to fix the boat, which I understood, if we're going to afford this boat that he needed to do it and he had to talk to his vendors, to get some great deals, to get it going.

- I had some money to work with but very little.

And me doing the refit on Snoek, required that I would do all the trades.

I would do the plumbing, the electrical, the painting, the woodwork, the rigging, the deck hardware.

The boat came home, and this is in my driveway at home.

You can see in the fall here in October.

We were about to get started on a big project.

I decided to put a full frame on the boat and cover it up, so that I could work throughout the winter, and heat the boat a bit, and light it that I could see what I was doing.

From sort of September until July, I really put my photography on the back burner.

I said to my wife, just give me this winter to do this project, and really get my hands back into something that I love doing.

And from my early apprentice days where I could fix things, make things.

This is how I did all the time lapse, I made a little rig with a plate and a grip, so that I could move the camera anywhere, so I could just hit the button and the time lapse started.

I knew what this boat needed.

I knew how to do it.

I knew where to find it.

I knew how to put it together.

Sometimes I needed a little help here and there to get things done.

But I had the big picture all along, and that's what kept me going.

Okay, so now we get into all the different sections.

I decided to replace all the hatches, because they were all crazed and were leaking terribly.

So every time it rains, a puddle of water down below.

That's not a good thing.

I save almost all the antique, sanded it down, epoxy it, varnished it.

So you can see this is what I started out with.

And this was in the galley, and this is an area I wanted to definitely replace.

It just needed to be refinished.

And I decided to sand everything down, put a coat of epoxy on it, just to close up the pores, and then I sanded that down and put a coat of varnish on it.

And that's how I treated all the varnish, the varnishing down below.

And you can see here that all looking like new again, but this is very old.

So here's the new galley locker that I completely rebuilt, but the original dark teak frame was just refinished.

- To do a project like what Onne's doing on this boat, is a fine line between sheer brilliance and pure insanity.

To gut it and this kind of start from scratch, is really the only way to do it.

- So this is the head, or if you'd like to call it, the bathroom, very rudimentary, a little hand water pump.

And everything else was really tired, rusty, leaking.

You can see the old sink on the left and the new sink on the right.

And here it is finished with a new faucet with hot and cold running water.

The main sink in the galley, you can see it was pitted, but here we are, the new sink arrived.

I figured this would fit.

You can see I've marked it out and I'm gonna start cutting, to drop the sink into the galley.

Here's the completed piece.

Sink is in all sealed up and locked down, and a nice hot and cold running spigot, with pressurized water.

One of the things I said to Tenley is, what's important to you on the boat?

And she said, "I wanna have hot and cold running water".

And then I had to put all new piping in the boat, obviously hot and cold.

So I use PEX piping and PEX fittings.

Doing the refit and Snoek was a full time job for me.

Not only did I do all the trades, but somebody had to run the project.

You had to be on the phone, to the vendors of the various, be at the rigging, being at the paint, being whatever.

I would periodically go and visit with some of my vendors, and to get information on their products.

It's a huge help for me to do these things because I sort of know what I need to do, but I need to get the finer details tweaked with an expert.

And in one case, an old friend stopped by to see me in my shop.

- I thought I might catch you in here.

- Yeah, good timing.

- Not exactly boating weather out there.

- It's a cold day.

That's why I'm doing this inside and don't wanna be anywhere near the boat.

- So today's plumbing day?

- It's plumbing day.

And I'll just give you the little briefing here.

I've done my research.

This is what I've got.

And it sounds like it is pretty cool.

- It's a great (mumbles), I've seen these before, this about six gallons, and that's really all you need.

Anytime that engines running, if you could see this, this is a heat exchanger, copper goes in with fins on it and comes back out here.

So antifreeze goes through this way with a little pump.

And it's a glass line steel tank.

It's about six gallons, I think.

So anytime you have a glass size steel tank, you're gonna have to have some sort of anode rod.

So think about where this goes where you could replace this every few years, you could get it to last.

You got all your piping?

- I do.

What I'll do is I'll go on the boat with my coil of PEX, and then make the runs and then cut them on the boat-- - This is to me the wonder plastic.

It just doesn't get brittle over time.

It just is terrific.

You put it in, you feel great about it.

Connections wise is a bunch of different connections.

What are you going to use this stuff?

Your gonna kinda-- - Yeah, that's it.

Just pop them on.

(mumbles) That's easy.

I'll take easy believe me.

- All right.

So you shower up in the cockpit somewhere.

- Cockpit, absolutely.

Every time you swim, you gotta be able to have a little-- - So let me pull it out and put it back away.

So that'll be that'll be perfect.

All right, so why don't we get something done today?

- Yeah, sure.

- I can fit.

- Yeah, right.

You know how tight it is down below there.

- It is pretty tight.

- People think it's tight in the house and boats 10 times worse.

- Let's get something done today.

- Okay, got it.

- Now grab that.

- You wanna have a look?

Now listen, you carry this and I'll carry the valve.

- Get your jacket though.

(upbeat music) - This is what the nav station, or the area on the boat where you do your navigating, look like.

And then I just started to make a whole new panel, and the panel will then house all the new instruments.

And here were all the new instruments that I'd ordered.

And then had to figure out how to lay them out in this wooden panel.

Now I wanna just drill the holes for the screws.

This is the new Nav station, the way that I did it and rebuilt everything.

I decided to go with a very simple refrigeration system.

You plug this in to a cigarette lighter and it draws one to two amps, absolutely perfect.

And I wanted to go with solar panels, so that the solar panels to charge the batteries that could run the refrigerator day and night.

Working on getting my lighting organized, and on my way to New Bedford here in Massachusetts, I'm gonna go and talk to Kender, and his company specializes in marine lighting.

And what I wanna figure out is if I can get rid of all my incandescent lights and go with LED, and if they have suitable fixtures, and how that's all going to work.

- These are obviously reading lights.

You have your traditional bulkhead style that pivots this way now.

And then a new trend we're seeing is gooseneck style like this.

Either one of these are becoming loaded with features now.

So you could get built in dimming, you could get USB ports.

- I replaced all the lighting, all the wiring, because it was all old incandescent lights, they got hot, they didn't burn properly, used a lot of power.

I went to LED.

And then this is what it looked like after I was finished with this particular fitting, for the LED.

I also decided to put a windlass on the boat, and so that is a piece of gear that you put on the front of the boat to pull up the anchor.

So what this will go up in here, up against the bottom unit, or the the chain, and so the chain comes on deck.

So bolted up later on.

And what I ended up doing was running these big heavy gauge cables, all the way back to the battery 2 gauge, 2.0 gauge wires and this is the controller for the foot switches.

So these are the foot switches that will go up.

You can see the holes up in the deck, and they'll control the winch.

So we had to pull the motor out of this, out of the space here, to get the new mounts on.

And when I had the whole motor out, I decided to paint the bilge, and also put this new sound down.

Sound insulation in the whole space.

I've even put some underneath the sink.

But it's been a great time to replace the battery boxes, check the wiring.

Like I said paint the bilge.

Will slide the whole engine back in and close it up.

And at that point I was able to clean and service.

This is a filter where the roll water comes in from the ocean to cool the engine.

And these are filters that I replaced.

On the left is the old filter, diesel filter.

And on the right is a new nice clean compact filter engine back in.

So here we are.

The new mounting pads on the engine have been installed.

We got all the other new wiring, connections, belts, everything was replaced.

- After the amount of time Onne is going to have spent dirty and tired, and beat up, and questioning every reason why he's doing this.

I can't even fathom the dark moments.

And there will be plenty of dark moments.

- What the bloody hell was that?

What were the working conditions like?

Well, in February, when it was four o'clock in the afternoon, and the temperature was about sort of 26 degrees outside, and I was lucky if I got the boat to two to 40 degrees down below, with a little space heater and wearing hiking boots.

There was times when the working conditions were lousy.

I'd look down the hull of the boat or look inside the boat.

And I could see seven things that I just had to tackle, and it just became a little much.

And there was times when I thought, oh my goodness, how am I gonna manage?

This is gonna kill me.

- And then the boat was under a tent, and there wasn't a lot of progress happening.

I couldn't see it from the outside.

So I would climb on up and look inside and kind of shake my head, and go back down and finish dinner and yell when it was finished.

I got to a point in February or early March and it was dark and cold, that I thought If I stop now, I will not get going again.

I will lose the momentum and that'll be the end of the project.

It's the winter, the gallery is dead.

There are no customers walking in.

He's normally going down south shooting for assignment work, for (mumbles) in the Caribbean.

And none of that was happening.

I was getting a little nervous.

The bank account was draining.

He was very good about sticking to his budget, but it still he wasn't making any money.

So that was the point of contention.

- And at that time, I had to dig deep and just turn my radio which had a great talk show on, a little louder.

And those guys kept me going because you couldn't dwell on this cold, and the miserableness.

- Every night at dinner, I'd hear another story about what he fixed.

Some mechanics, some this, some that, and I really was over my head.

I feigned interest a little bit, I think.

But, I was a little tired of the discussion at dinner time every night, frankly.

- Here's the boat.

Again, looking at those shots of the original boat, this is what we call the hull or the top sides.

Very tired, very chalky, and it really needed to be painted.

And this is where the work began.

And here they are actually starting to spray paints, the base coat.

And then we had the first coat of blue, on the hull and I thought, yes, this is gonna look nice.

And this was the day that the trailer came to pick her up and I was like, so excited.

Picking up the boat from the shop, the paint shop, put it on the trailer.

And I just took a couple of pictures of the boat on the road, which was a magical trip.

- So it came back from the paint shop and it looked amazing.

I could not believe what I saw it.

It was a boat.

And now it was my turn to make some decisions.

Some finish decisions.

I selected some fun cushions and some great lighting inside the boat, and some neutral carpeting for the hull, that was about it.

- Tenley got involved here in picking the right colors.

And we had new cushions.

Everything smelled better, everything was nice and clean.

Here we were working with the custom Marine canvas group down in nowhere in Connecticut.

And one of the seamstresses finishing off one of the cushions.

Here the team, a canvas maker from Wickford was making a pattern for the dodger, to make a nice new dodger.

One of the ladies at the canvas shop here, putting the panels actually onto the canvas.

And here we are all done.

The mast was in good shape, but the very base of the mast needed quite a bit of work.

So if you look, this was the base of the mast corroded beyond repair in this particular section.

So I ended up cutting a few inches off the base of the mast, and then had to make a plug that the mast could sit on to replace the two inches that I took off.

So here we are, I made a base out of G-10 material.

Here it's in position.

You can see what I did now.

It's sitting on a two inch foot.

And with the insert that the mast would move around.

So this is where the mast comes through the deck and goes down into the boat.

With some work I was able to sand that down and blast it, and closed it up.

And it's all nicely finished off now.

I put a new track on the back of the mast.

And you can see this is all now, with the new track, all ready to go.

And here's all the pile of the old rigging, all that old ropes and halyards that I took off, and either gave to the consignment shop or put it in the dumpster.

I'm doing a lot of the projects myself on this boat, but there are certain things that I cannot do, and I need expertise help and Fip with his rigging shop is so good at helping me, and explaining how to do it.

When it comes to doing the actual wires and the swaging.

This is really specialized stuff.

I love these shops, the smells of the oil, I can see the machines.

It's the trades that I spend time in as a youngster.

And it's a crucial part of my project.

I also had to replace the lights.

There's a bunch of lights on a mast for navigation at night that ships can see you.

So time for new LED, these lights, you could see miles away.

Lighting on the spreaders had to be replaced so these, the old lights.

This is how I redid the wiring.

I ran all new wires inside the mast, which is quite a project because you physically can't get in there.

One of the problems was that you had all these wires in the mast, that were just hanging there.

So when you're at anchor, and the boat was swaying like this, everything was clanging in there.

So I went to the computer and I did a search about noisy halyards or noisy wires.

So when you have the whole bundle of new wires outside of the mast, every three feet, put three or four zip ties, and then leave the ties sticking out.

So when it goes back up the mast and you're at anchor, all these little tails prevented from clanging around.

They're quiet, problem solved.

This is the main steering compass, as it was originally on the boat, when I bought the boat.

There was no liquid in the compass, so that the car didn't even swing.

It was cracked.

And here you get an idea of what it looked like, on the left was the old, and then the same compass, but obviously a newer model.

So I've just arrived at the facility that manufactures the steering systems for the boat.

And I wanna change it a bit because as you can see here, 10 is quite far forward.

I wanna move the steering wheel on the pedestal aft to where I'm standing, so that there's more room to get in and out of the boat, access the winches, just a better setup.

So here we have what we call the pedestal, and that is where the steering wheel is connected to.

And this company builds these, the old ones and new ones.

And I wanna move it from there, the old spot way aft further back.

And so, I'm gonna go and have a look inside and see what I can figure out - So we have a few main components that make up the main body of it.

This is the upper casting that's cast in the machine right here in house.

- Beautifully done.

- And then we also have our extrusion, and then a cast base.

The bolt pattern is exactly the same.

So it's (mumbles).

However, when that pedestal was invented, compass was the main navigational piece of equipment at the helm.

And that was essentially it.

Now we have a few more (mumbles) we want to put our fingertips, like a chart plotter.

So now we can still keep the compass.

You get a chart plotter.

Now you also get a single of our engine-- - I know the two levers and that's so much better.

- We're gonna drill is a little bit smaller.

In 30 seconds to 16.

- Under size.

- Under the two inch that I'm gonna put through there.

- And that's the final size.

- And then I come in with a reader and I do two inch of an extra final, all cleaned up really nice.

And they're all made out of (mumbles) that doesn't rust.

It's good for the environment.

It's good for your boat.

- Wow, that's awesome.

I've come in a full circle.

40 years ago was in a machine shop learning the trade of making parts.

And here I am, like I said, 40 years later, back in a machine shop, but this time with a whole marine environment and talking to the same people, looking at the same machines, but it's all for my boat, and my refit on Snoek.

Here was the new pedestal, in my workshop where I installed the navigation equipment, the compass, I put the wheel in and wired everything.

And here it is in position.

So much further aft, a much cleaner new look.

The apprenticeship gave me a set of skills that I didn't have before, and that I really perfected how to work with my hands.

I sort of had it in me, but the skill was honed and polished during my apprenticeship.

And I came out of there confident to pick up a saw, a hacksaw, a drill or whatever.

And also I felt I could look at a problem, a mechanical problem, be it a steering system or a mast, or a rig that needed to be fixed or tweaked, or drilled, or tapped.

I knew how to tackle it.

- One thing I think none of us really understood about Onne, is how much he understands systems, and his engineering background.

These kind of high school programs that they grew up with in South Africa.

- I think it's important to see people like Onne putting time and effort into boats.

And we're in a community here where boating is a big part of the industry.

And it's a big employer around here.

- The Marine trades, especially here in Rhode Island, is a really hungry for new workers.

- Parts of this town, where there are clusters of companies that build boats, that build parts, that build molds, masts, sails or anything you could think of that has anything to do with the Marine industry electronics.

I mean, Newport is kind of where, people play with their boats, but Bristol tends to be where they make them.

- They need people with the kinds of skills that we teach here at Iris.

So, the Marine trades are somewhere in the neighborhood of 1700 companies and 13,000 workers.

That makes up about a fifth of the Rhode Island economy.

When I go out and talk to people who are in the industry, the biggest issue for them, is having skilled workers.

- In the process of teaching kids, how to build boats.

We're also inspiring them in the Herreshoff museum with stories about innovation and engineering, which is also problem solving.

We're inspiring them with stories about design and entrepreneurship, which is also problem solving.

They build boats here.

They learn how to use tools.

They learn the rudiments of boat building skills.

In the process, they also learn how to be employees.

They learn life skills.

They learn things like showing up on time.

They learn things like filling out a time sheet.

They learn things like working as a team, working as part of a process, and the ability to actually be part of a functioning company.

- I feel that some of the skills that I acquired and learned in my apprenticeship, I never expected would help me so much in my life.

Because you're learning to work with your hands and that's such a valuable skill to learn.

There's too few people doing that.

And the world needs people to fix stuff, make things.

And it was a great confidence booster for me.

- I can't fathom doing a project like.. First of all, the patience and the understanding of all the systems.

By the way, when it's all said and done, he's gonna have an experience on the boat, like no other, because when the inevitable little problem happens on this boat, he knows exactly how to fix it.

- And last but not least, it is a sailboat, after all, I visited a shop where they manufacture sails.

There's so much new technology involved these days, new materials, new designs, sails for a wider variety of wind conditions.

So it was good to see and touch materials, talk with some folks on the floor and get a better understanding of what the perfect sails solution for Snoek would be.

I can really appreciate the craft and design of this very important part of my boat.

I've wrestled with huge sails in my previous sailing days.

And now I need to know more about what works best for a smaller boat, like mine.

Fascinating to see.

So here we are in the garden, the box had arrived from the sail maker.

Adrian and I decided to unroll the sails and have a look, and stick the numbers on and all that kind of good stuff.

An exciting time.

Here we are putting the new sail on the boom.

We had never flown a spinnaker on the boat before because all the old sails were so tired.

Whereas this was a brand new star cut Spinnaker.

All the mast work had been completed.

So I did all the mast work here at Clark's, on the saw horses.

And now we're talking June, so it's nice out.

It's not so cold anymore.

- After all the work was done, one of the last things to happen to it was to step the mast.

And we used our crane to basically hoist the mast up and put it into place.

My name is Jim Clark.

I'm one of the owners of Clark boat yard.

It's a family business.

We're a full service boat yard.

Meaning that we haul boats.

We store them for the winter, we maintain them, we repair them.

May 1st our moorings season starts.

We start launching boats for the season.

We take our hydraulic trailer, we move it around with a front end loader.

So then we lift the boat up, where it's been sitting for the year and then drive it over to our marine railway.

And then we launch the boat.

- This is my own project.

It was a boat that needed some love and care.

And I got stuck into it, I fixed it up.

And now I have a beautiful boat.

- If you'd asked him, when he was working away in the machine shop in South Africa, this is where you're going to end up, he would've laughed at you.

- Onne is one of those people that he's kind of a renaissance man in a lot of ways.

- It's really nice to see him get to take all that effort that he would normally put into a photo shoot, and put it into his own boat.

- I've known Onne most of my professional sailing career as the guy in the helicopter, or the crazy guy in the water shooting up out of the water, when you're going around a mark or just taping, having a camera in his hand.

So, I just kinda liked the fact that he's getting back on the water again and going sailing.

This is why we all do this.

- Hey guys, how are you?

- Hey.

- She looks beautiful.

- Thank you.

- Did you get your hot water?

- I did, and used it.

- Have a great one.

- Thank you.

- I'll be looking for you out there.

(somber music) - Van der Wal you're useless, you're better off rather working on a farm.

What are you doing in class?

This is just not my shtick.

There're other things that I love and have a passion for.

- When the sails go up and they fit, and they're smooth, and the boat leans over a little bit and start shooting forward, and Tenley has a big smile on her face.

It's gonna (mumbles).

Beautiful.

(somber music) - I learned that Onne is very tenacious, and he gets a be in his bonnet, and he will get the job done.

It's been a great kind of a second opportunity for us.

Like we never had time alone.

We were married with two kids.

We had a third and now this is our honeymoon.

This is our second wind.

- The project physically took a lot out of me, and mentally, not something that you can't replace.

But it puts you to the test, it really does, and I've said this to you several times, in February when it's four o'clock in the afternoon and it's dark, and it's sort of 36 degrees below, and you look at the project you just done, and it's finished.

But you can see one, two, three, four, five other projects that need to be done, you just like, keep going, don't stop.

And the other rewarding thing is that when we are somewhere at anchor or we're sailing along, and Tenley's relaxed and reading a book, and she says to me, "you did an amazing job, thank you".

I get choked up.

It's turned out perfectly.

And it's just a rewarding thing to work with your hands and to make something that's yours.

(somber music) - "Second Wind, The Tale of a Sailor", is brought to you in part, by the following sponsors, Canon.

(upbeat music) And by Sunbrella.

Sunbrella Marine fabrics have been used around the world for over 50 years, from small ski boats to sail boats, to yachts.

Sunbrella Marine fabrics offers shade and protection from the elements.

Designed to be fade, (mumbles) and weather resistant.

Sunbrella fabrics are made for being on the water.

North Sails.

We're committed to helping sailors maximize their sail performance and lifespan, whether you race or cruise, each sail is custom designed and engineered for your boat and sailing style.

North sails take you where you want to go.

And by, Edson.

For those who want to see what is beyond the horizon, and know that turning back home, isn't an option.

Edson since 1859, making adventures happen.