JUST under four years ago, Southern Monaro farmer Keith Campbell decided to try something a little different and build a catamaran.
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Mr Campbell’s dream of building a boat by hand and launching it into the ocean came to fruition on Sunday when his 15-metre Easton Cat catamaran travelled under police escort from the family farm at Mila to the waters of the Eden Naval Wharf.
The high seas are a long way from the inland locality of Mila, 20 minutes drive south-west of Bombala, which sits around 800 metres above sea level and over 100km from the Pacific coastline.
Mr Campbell’s wife, Sophie explained that it had been a fairly complex process to get the catamaran to Eden.
“On Saturday it was loaded on to the truck on the farm. We had two gates open to get it out; it had to travel over 1.5km of dirt road from the farm to the road and that was the scariest bit,” Ms Campbell said.
After much initial deliberation the former sheep farmer set his sights on an aluminium cruising catamaran designed by Tasmanian boat builder Owen Easton.
Mr Easton designed and built his first in a series of aluminium catamarans in 1989 following many years of offshore cruising in a variety of mono and multi-hulled vessels.
The pair met during a short boat spotting trip to Tasmania in 2011, where Mr Campbell invited Mr Easton to his farm shed at Mila to help start the extensive construction process.
The competent welder began the project by re-constructing a 90-metre long shed, giving him the space to create the boat.
The catamaran was constructed using hand shaped and rolled flat sheet aluminium welded together over three years, completing much of the work on night shifts by himself after knocking off from the farm.
Ms Campbell said it had been a big project of passion and had been built from scratch.
“I think this whole project has really intrigued and inspired a lot of South East locals - both farmers and yachties alike,” she said.
“A fifth generation farmer from the Monaro building an aluminium catamaran in his shed?
"It sounds pretty crazy, doesn't it!
“But now she's in the water, the enormity of it all is really starting – pardon the pun - to sink in!”
On the journey down to the coast, local farming families waved the boat farewell. Once at Eden, the entrance was 10mm too small and the boat was lifted by crane into the wharf area and then into the sea.
However, that was not before Mr Campbell’s mum, Aida Campbell, had christened the cat ‘Snow Dog’ across the bow with a bottle of French champagne.
From Eden the boat’s next stop will be a new mooring at Merimbula where the Campbells will continue the internal building over the coming months before setting off for the open ocean some time in 2016.