The begining

It all started years ago with my obsession to build a sail boat, not any boat though, a wooden boat!. Time passed and boat plans turned to dust, due to family commitments, the dream never became a reality.

Recently the yearning resurfaced and I gave serious thought to building the wooden dreamboat and considered some designs by Lyle Hess and Paul Gartside. The time commitment and the price of good boat building timber made the project unfeasible.

All these years my wife Fiona kept saying, " build a small open day sailer big enough to take some friends and my picnic basket out sailing for the day." Advice I regretfully ignored, until now.!

After scanning the web over some time and  reading the books of Frank & Margaret Dye - "Ocean crossing Wayfarer" and "Dingy Cruising" - I learnt about an incredible capable sail boat called Wayfarer.

The search for building plans ensued but I discovered that there were  none as the boat is only manufactured under licence. So this meant that I'd have to buy one! On further investigation it appeared that there weren't any available in South Africa so I considered importing a Wayfarer from  the UK.

After some months I came across an advert for a Wayfarer for sale here in Cape Town !? I could not believe it! A phone call, had a look and some negotiating and Wayfarer 579 was mine. !