Three Years of Rebuilding An OLD SAILING SHIP!

My name is Gijs and this is my dad. And we are just two out of many many people around the world rebuilding and restoring old boats. Three years ago we started rebuilding this 82 year old ship for the second time in its history with the goal to be able to take her anywhere we want comfortably Why don't we have to go home? Because we are lazy This year, 2025, I bought the boat from dad after he owned it for one day shy of 50 years. I want to start off with a bit of both our and the family's background. There have always been boats in the family. After the second world war the family had a demolition business moving debris out of Amsterdam with barges in the canals. The first sailing ship that grandpa bought was an old traditional Dutch inland cargo ship, the Nordstep, in 1959 which was stripped completely bare without rigging. Grandpa, together with dad and his brothers, brought the ship under sail again. That was a great boat but not an ocean-going sailor and circumnavigating the world was high on the wish list of both dad and grandpa. So they searched for a suitable ship, couldn't find one and decided to convert an old tugboat into one. Hey dad! I'm cutting out the old ----. Dad, 27 at the time, dropped out of the institute of technology to start working on the boat full-time while grandpa handled the fundings. He learned most of his boat building skills from working on the Tiger Hai and when the money ran out he started working on other people's boats and new-build yachts as well. And he attended nautical college to get his officer and captain's papers for coastal trade. In 1990 he left with grandpa to circumnavigate the world. A year before they left he met mom, who was a resident physician training to become a gynecologist. And in 1996, two years after dad and grandpa returned from their circumnavigation, I was born. Already at a very young age I wanted to become a sailor. By the end of primary school I already knew which maritime academy I was going to attend six years later. I got my papers as a maritime officer, both technical and nautical, but already during my first cadetship I noticed that being a nautical officer on big cargo ships was not for me. I found bridge watch quite boring. Too much paperwork and safety-related stuff. I felt more at home in the engine room. After two cadetships on cargo ships I started working as an engineer on dredging vessels, which was work that I enjoyed greatly. And I flew all over the world to work on dredgers. Then COVID hit, which made going ashore impossible. So while on board, with land always very close by when dredging, the ships were starting to feel a bit confined. During this period, when I was at home for three months because we couldn't fly back to the ship, dad and I attended a sail endorsement course. Dad for fun and I to get my papers as an officer on sailing ships, since my deck officer papers were still valid. After COVID, working on the dredging ships did not completely return to normal. The company was still reluctant to let us off the ship in our free time, so after a while I decided that I needed more freedom and I quit. Dad and I finished another boat project we'd been working on and then relayed all our focus fully on the Tiger I, while making some money on the side as freelance handymen. And I've taken on some jobs on sailing boats and yachts. We've been able to fund this whole project mostly from dad and my savings, and the jobs that we do on the side. Even though those kind of dried up in the second half of 2025. So in 2026, I'm gonna have to start picking up some more jobs on the side again to keep the project going. These YouTube videos bring in around 100 bucks a month, so that's a nice bonus on something that we already do for fun. But not much more than that. The real value lies in the engagement with you, the viewers, and people from the boatbuilding and sailing community. We are a bit reluctant to get our videos sponsored, because that takes focus and energy away from what we actually want to be doing, which is boatbuilding. And the only sponsor offers we've had so far are from Timu and other low-hanging fruit that I don't really want to be associated with. Maybe if Makita comes with an offer, or another company that we actually have good experience with in this line of work, we'll reconsider. Since the videos don't bring in that much, I'm really able to see them as a hobby. Of course, living off a YouTube channel is probably a very nice way to live, but very few people actually manage to do that. And not being financially dependent on the performance of the channel allows us to focus all our energy on the rebuild. That means we can spend every day on the boat, and a couple evenings a week to get a video out once or twice a month. I think we can call this build a family project. Doing the entire rebuild together with dad really is what makes it so nice. My girlfriend Svenja helps when she has time in between her studies, and mom as well wherever she can, doing upholstery and curtains and all that stuff. And one of my sisters of course restored the whole figurehead. Doing everything ourselves does mean stuff takes longer than if we'd hire people to help. On the other hand, we save the money. And we know every system in the ship from inside out, because we are the ones who put it there. And if we make bad design choices, we can only blame ourselves. With every design choice we make, we of course have to take the budget and quality into consideration. Mostly we tend to choose quality, trying to avoid cheap stuff. A lot of old stuff that we have laying around can be reused or repurposed. Some of it still remains from when the ship was new built in 1943. If it still works after 82 years, it's probably better quality than what we could buy new for a reasonable price. When we do buy new stuff, we go for parts that hopefully still works in 30 years. Which does mean paying a bit more, or doing some extra research and contacting suppliers for stuff that's not available in webshops. Of course, over the course of 3 years we learn stuff, and gather knowledge about jobs that are already done. Which means that every now and then we find out we could have done something in different ways. Better ways. Currently we are 3 years into a 2 year rebuild, which probably doesn't surprise anybody. It is always more work than you planned, and we still have quite some stuff to do. We did do 2 small premature shakedown cruises. One with friends, and one with family. Which gave us very useful new insights, so we can now go back to building for the coming months. Coming summer we hope to be in a stage that we can do some longer sails. But I don't expect we'll be anywhere close to finished. So it will be short trips in between work. At this point I don't dare to say how long until the rebuild is finished. When we are finished in the saloon and aft cabin, we still have the whole forward half of the ship below deck to do. That includes the 2 forward heads with shower and forward cabins, including all the plumbing that comes with that. And in the engine room, the whole electric propulsion is a job to look forward to. On deck we still have a multitude of small jobs, mainly winches that need to be overhauled and modified. Regarding the yard, our birth for the entire rebuild so far, we have been very fortunate. In the past 4 years there have been 3 different owners. Each one has allowed us to stay here to work on the boat. Right now all the buildings have been demolished, so we had to leave our shed last fall, which was a reason for a big clean up. And we bought an extra shipping container to put our building materials in, which the new owner allowed us to place next to the boat. The new owner is going to start putting down new buildings at some point in the near future. And the yard will be turned into an actual working place, after 10 years of dereliction. So we might have to move at some point. But they are very nice and think along for solutions, so we really cannot complain. Of course we cannot stay here forever, and the storage unit and the shipping containers are just a temporary solution. And for the past 10 years we have always been a bit insecure here, not knowing if a new owner would again allow us to stay. Space in the Netherlands is a scarce commodity, especially in the cities. So the search for a new place has been going on for a long time. But mom and dad did find a new shed nearby, where we can permanently store our tools and materials, once we have to leave this place. We don't have to worry about leaving all our stuff behind, or having to get rid of it all, which is a huge relief. Of course, after all the help they gave us, and now that the boat is able to, we had to take out the family for Christmas. So we went to one of the Dutch islands for a second small shakedown cruise. Where we of course had some problems, but mostly very very nice weather. In the marina of Vlieland we were greeted by some fellow sailors. And I do have to thank Jan and Anne-Linde from the Gandalf, who we'd never met before, but they decided to get their drone out to film us entering the marina. They are great people and they have a very nice boat. You can follow them on Instagram. It's called Sailing Gandalf. And now we're back home again. Playtime is over, back to work. 2025 has been an amazing year, so let's go for another one. And a big thank you to everyone who has been following us, and watching or commenting on the videos. Have a great 2026!