Hi everybody, an upgrade to the blog section after alot of time of of silence, I apologize for this.
I just came back form Germany where I took several pictures of the almost complete IDEA21 cruise built by Milos and Kristine, I have been still there one year ago for hull rotation.
Now the boat is 90% complete, cabin, deck and cockpit done, interiors almost finished, rig done, rudders and keel built.
The first impression is that this small boat is HUGE.
The cockpit is super comfortable for 4-5 adults both when sailing and when moored.
The interiors are definitely a total new level compared to idea 19, in this new small vessel you can really think about staying one week at the sea cruising with a family of four without any concern. You have 4 real berths, a separate toilet , a microgalley where you can arrange a battery operated mini fridge (the ones used in the vans) and a camping stove , there is room for a freshwater tank, a good amount of space for storage under the berths.
I dare to say she has the interior room of a lot of commercial 7.5 m sailboats.
Milos have done an incredible work building his boat reaching the kind of perfect balance between wood working beauty and simple rugged and usable solutions.
The rig: given some non exactly cheap quotations for an aluminum rig, Milos asked the feasability of a wooden rig. It took a day or two for me to teake a decision, that was affirmative for a couple of reason:
-the conclamated skill of the builder
-the exceptional quality of the wood boards provided by his supplier
-the fact that this boat is going to be a cruising one, so we don’t have to stay super tight with weights.
I delivered Milos two extra drawing for mast, boom and al the related details. This drawings are now intgrated in the “standard ” idea 21 drawings.
Rig construction was if possible of even higher standard compared to boat building.
We rigged the boat with shrouds and forestay , everything went super smooth, then we hoisted the mainsail and jib for a couple of minutes just to make sure that sails have the right measures; there is a small correction to be done on the jib, which is quite normal when you order sails before setting up the rig, nothing dramatic. Mainsail is definitely big and quite impressive with its square head and all the full lenght battens and its three reefing point, it speaks about serious sailing. We also spent some time marking the position of some stuffs related to deck hardware, since fitting the deck hardware on the deck will be one of the next tasks .
A huge thanks to Milos and Kristine for the dedication and skill they put in their work, next report will be on how this small jewel sails.
These are several pictures of the boat that definitively speak for themselves, you can notice that for several stuffs, like rudder hardware and boom gooseneck , builders decided to go for a custom carbon fiber monolithic construction under vacuum, light and strong, the kind of solution you normally find on most sporty luxury superyacht.
