Over a thousand objects in one boat

Contrary to what you might expect, it's not a boat with a lot of objects on it, but a yacht built from over 1200 wooden objects, each with its own story and emotional charge. It's a story about the 2012 Olympics and this working yacht was the idea of artists keen to build links between people, between the sailing history of the community in the South East of England and the Olympic yachting races.

In fact the yacht is a work of art and its curators are Gregg Whelan and Gary Winters, two young English artists, members of the company Lone Twin. The idea of building the boat came up in 2000, when they were in Norway with another art project. This project aimed to make people cross bridges to bring them together. There was even a round trip across a bridge with the locals, where they talked about crossing, about water, about boats and how they can create connections between people.

From these discussions came the idea of building a boat to connect people with something. For a few years the project sat there, somewhere in the back of my mind, waiting for the right moment. It came in 2009, when the two artists applied for funding from the Cultural Olympiad programme, a cultural programme that accompanied the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in the UK. They were accepted and so the adventure began.

The project consists of collecting wooden objects with a special meaning and using them to build a yacht to be launched in May 2012. It would sail around the coast of England for three months. The story of each object was also to be written down and all the stories were to make up a book to be launched with the yacht.

In 2011, from February to August, Welan and Winters travelled throughout the South East of England, inviting people to donate wooden objects with special meaning. They managed to collect more than 1,200 objects as diverse and special as a splinter from a Jimi Hendrix guitar to parts of famous old ships.

There were hangers, toys, trains with rails, guitars and other musical instruments, tools. One of the most prized was a mast from an old boat that sailed down the Thames. Five circles, the Olympic circles, were cut from it and mounted on the cabin door.

A designer and 4 professional builders were hired to build the yacht, led by Mark Covell, a skilled sailor and former Olympic silver medallist. They worked for 8 months, during which time all the items gathered were cut, machined, sanded, and glued together to make a boat. This happened and the 10m long yacht was launched on 7 May 2012 in Chichester. Between 18 May and 11 August it sailed along the coast from Hayling Island to Weymouth, the venue for the Olympic yacht races.

Gregg and Gary's project has succeeded in uniting a community with strong ties to boating and sailing in a place with a long history of shipbuilding. By donating those items filled with memories, it created the excitement of participating in such a project and the idea that they will never be lost, forever trapped in a symbol of the Olympics.

(source: theguardian.com)