Sailing away from the humdrum of city life
TIRED of the hustle and bustle of everyday life, a former Durban family has given up their materialistic desires to settle for life on a boat.
Dinesh Chetty, his wife Temara and their two daughters Tara and Zia, were now looking forward to sailing away from the conventional way of living, in their 40-foot-sized self-made mobile home.
Their decision to re-establish life on a boat came as a means of “escape from the normal world”. The couple grew up in Phoenix and later moved to Johannesburg.
“One of the most important reasons was, for me and my family, to get out of the daily rush. Living in Gauteng for a long time and getting used to the daily back-and-forth rush, going on holiday twice a year, making money but going nowhere slowly, paying for a bond and buying a car, are some of the things we did, which had become stale and that did not feel like a normal life for us,” said Pillay.
Besides that, travelling was also a major part of their retirement plan and the Pillays wanted to do it as cost effective, so they decided to set their dream into motion, using their savings, skills and knowledge.
The boat, named “Kiff”, a colloquial term for nice, is a trimaran sailing boat made of fibreglass. It was built in Pretoria, before being transported to the Zululand Yacht Club in Richards Bay in October.
The process required for it to be moved in three separate hulls, through the use of two trucks, prior to being assembled and the decks constructed.
The couple managed to build a structure of this magnitude through the application of their knowledge acquired from research that spans over at least a decade.
“To get knowledge in this day and age is pretty simple. There are vast amounts of books and the internet, vast amounts of people who have done similar things and you can speak to them from anywhere in the world, thanks to technological resources,” said Chetty.
He also has a background in technical engineering, while Temara is an artist. They also had the assistance of a few labourers.
“I also had an ulterior motive by getting my wife and two daughters to be hands-on in the process because I wanted to create a bit of inspiration for women, by them doing something that was seldom done by women. I wanted to show that it is possible for women to do jobs traditionally reserved for men,” he added.
It was difficult to quantify the cost of the entire process, said Chetty. However, the material was acquired over a period of time, with between R3 000 and R5 000 going towards it monthly.
Temara said that a lot of energy and time was invested into the project, which began in May 2019.
“We got our first set of material and began building. We worked on it every weekend. My children were home-schooled and my husband had a full-time job, so we got to build on weekends, and with stolen one or two hours at night during the week, whenever we could,” she said.
The Chettys have completed at least 95% of their new home and are in the decorative stages, with minor additions to make, such as electrical work and plumbing. They moved into the boat at the beginning of this month.
The boat has three cabins on the main hull, a starter kitchen, shower, toilet, basin and a piano for their daughters, one of whom has been playing for 10 years.
The process was not without challenges. “We have faced different challenges, from psychological, to building a boat and to uncoupling ourselves from our traditional way of life is not easy.
“Doubt also sets in but you learn to be confident and to trust yourself.
“Other challenges were also financial and having to embrace change, which was harder for my family. But the goal was to encourage them to move and not be stagnant,” said Chetty.
Temara said that she was now enjoying life’s simple pleasures which were not financially taxing, while their 16- and 13-year-old daughters were gaining more independence.
The Chettys were presently busy getting a coastal-skipper’s licence and looked forward to exploring the seas in the near future.
They plan to begin in Durban, and then sail to Asia or Europe.