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I came to Pattaya, Thailand, ten years ago with just enough money to last me a couple of months. The first things I did were buy a Honda two-stroke, 110cc motor-scooter and rent a cheap room. Then I went looking for a house with a yard where I could set up a boat-building business. I found it the same day through an old man I met at the Foodland supermarket.
The house looked exactly like a pumpkin but it had a big yard. I moved in within an hour of seeing it. An hour after that, I bought a load of plywood and planking and set about building my first product as a Thai boat-builder – a small dinghy. I was a long way from home, a long way from my first years as a builder of much bigger vessels in Italy, and a long way from where I find myself today.
I decided to start writing this blog because I recognise that for the past decade I have been enjoying an unusual adventure, not just in life but in boat-building. It's an adventure that I want to share. Since that first fateful day in Pattaya, I have been married twice and had two beautiful daughters. I have also built more than 100 vessels, not counting the scores of small boats I built in the front yard of the pumpkin house the first year I arrived. I have become part of the culture and economy of this part of Thailand, with two boat-building yards – both under the RB Power And Sailing banner – employing over 100 local employees and contractors and three foreigners, as well as various other investments.
These days, the vessels I build are a lot more ambitious – large sailing and power catamarans designed by a local naval architect to my specifications as well as custom monohulls and multihulls by many of the world's best-known naval architects – and they are no longer in wood alone but fibreglass, composite, and even steel, for clients who come to me from the USA, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and all over S.E. Asia.
Above: My first, very successful production series, the RB 34 catamaran, designed by Albert Nazarov, at anchor after sail trials off Jomtien, Thailand, in late 2007.
The house looked exactly like a pumpkin but it had a big yard. I moved in within an hour of seeing it. An hour after that, I bought a load of plywood and planking and set about building my first product as a Thai boat-builder – a small dinghy. I was a long way from home, a long way from my first years as a builder of much bigger vessels in Italy, and a long way from where I find myself today.
I decided to start writing this blog because I recognise that for the past decade I have been enjoying an unusual adventure, not just in life but in boat-building. It's an adventure that I want to share. Since that first fateful day in Pattaya, I have been married twice and had two beautiful daughters. I have also built more than 100 vessels, not counting the scores of small boats I built in the front yard of the pumpkin house the first year I arrived. I have become part of the culture and economy of this part of Thailand, with two boat-building yards – both under the RB Power And Sailing banner – employing over 100 local employees and contractors and three foreigners, as well as various other investments.
These days, the vessels I build are a lot more ambitious – large sailing and power catamarans designed by a local naval architect to my specifications as well as custom monohulls and multihulls by many of the world's best-known naval architects – and they are no longer in wood alone but fibreglass, composite, and even steel, for clients who come to me from the USA, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and all over S.E. Asia.
Above: My first, very successful production series, the RB 34 catamaran, designed by Albert Nazarov, at anchor after sail trials off Jomtien, Thailand, in late 2007.
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