Tom Kottmeier plans to ship his 33-foot wooden boat, built over the past two years, to Sweden in 2024 for a sail to Stockholm harbor.
Some carpentry buffs spend their retirement years building birdhouses, furniture or jewelry boxes. Tom Kottmeier had bigger plans.
Kottmeier is a Swede with a lifelong passion for boating and a deep fascination with Viking culture. His dream is to sail his ship — named Sleipnir, after the Norse god Odin’s magical eight-legged horse — up Sweden’s Göta Canal to Stockholm harbor in 2024.When asked what he loves most about sailing, Kottmeier answers: “Everything.”
Kottmeier said the Vikings started exploring in dugout canoes around 400 A.D., and over the next 500 years they perfected their nautical technology, using boat-building skills and vocabulary that are still in use today. Kottmeier said Vikings were the first seafarers to create a gull-wing-shaped hull that stabilized the boat from tipping over and the first to create distinctive trapezoid-shaped sails that allowed boats to better sail into the wind.
Kottmeier drew up his own design for the boat, which included reducing its size so it could fit inside a 40-foot container for shipment to Sweden. “It’s been a learning experience, but it’s very creative work,” said Schoenmeyr, a semi-retired engineer. “We work from a plan but we make mistakes. It can be a bit frustrating, but it’s enjoyable to see the fruits of one’s labor.”
Every weekday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., Kottmeier works on the ship. The boat, which is 7 feet, 4 inches wide, has a white oak keel, overlapping Port Orford cedar planking held together with 1,500 copper rivets and a 27-foot fir mast that is reclaimed wood from a former church building.
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