In July 2002, I found a piece of furniture at the local garbage collection which seemed perfectly suited to be the formers of my dinghy. So I kicked off the project, started to cut the pieces into 15cm wide strips, clamped them together in pairs, and cut them at proper angel.
By and by I produced a complete set of formers for my dinghy.
Finally I cut out the bearings for keel and stringers. This marked the beginning of my "PIRAT" adventure.
I had also found a name - "FLAME", which is not only the flame of inspiration or my burning desire to work out something with my hands, but stands for FL (Flora - my daughter), A (Anita - my wife) and ME (myself - I'm Mike by the way ...)
The real time budget however was given to me not until July, 2002. I had worked hard for a large computer network project in the airline industry, and had a lot of hours to compensate. Having implanted the idea of a sabbatical into my managers from February on I was given the opportunity to take a 3 month off-time between July and September. Without this, I would most likely never have dared to start works on FLAME.
