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Go your own way


Post-lockdown all the talk is of getting back to sailing’s grass roots, letting the fun and imagination roam more than the cheque book. How about chopping down some trees in the jungle, building a 70ft cat on the beach and sailing it around the world? Meet Ontong Java and Hans Klaar


My little dinghy glides slowly through the channel in Marigot Bay, St Maarten. Entering the lagoon, I immediately spot something odd. Something I have never


40 SEAHORSE


seen before. The thing is anchored just next to the mangroves, in water so shallow that my tiny outboard propeller swirls through the seaweed as I come closer. What in the world is this vessel supposed


to be? It’s a catamaran of some sort, with two very long hulls… one longer than the other. A surprisingly short wooden mast pokes up at the front of the boat. Long, flexible raw timber poles stretch aft from the mast, probably booms, with a sail made from tarpaulin, apparently the kind they use on trucks tucked in between them. Maybe some kind of crab claw rig? It has a vibe of something African, but with a traditional Polynesian heritage. A man walks slowly around on deck,


clearly minding his own business. I have to know more, and I’m not going to let this


opportunity pass by. I bring the dinghy up alongside his cat and greet him. The man is wiry, his skin dark brown


from the sun. He’s wearing a colourful shirt and khaki shorts, and comes across as extremely confident and rather intense. Apparently curious guests are nothing new to him so in a few sentences he tells me his name is Hans Klaar, and that he built the boat himself on a beach in Gambia. Out of rough planks he chopped from trunks himself from the rainforest, just above the beach. She is named Ontong Java – one of the largest atolls in the Solomon Islands. I can’t wait to hear more.


Design The design turns out to be his own, inspired by some ancient drawings he once


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