Mr. Konrad Broer

     Anyone who has ever visited the BYYB bulletin board, is familiar with BYYB member, Vacationer builder, Konrad Broer. The man has enthusiasm, and a sense of humor like no other. Konrad also tells his own story better than I ever could, so most of what follows is in his own words.
     "I live in Lincoln, Nebraska, (also known as the sailing mecca of the world, LOL!) OK, well not really. In fact, we only have one decent size lake in the vicinity. Branched Oak Lake is 1,800 acres, and that’s not really all that big, but you have to take what you can get. There’s Lewis and Clark Reservoir up by Terry Crisp in South Dakota, that’s about three hours away. That’s a fantastic lake for sailing. So anyway, we have a rather small, but still fairly knowledgeable sailing community."
     "I graduated from the University of Nebraska (ahem, *GO HUSKERS*) in’94 in construction engineering and have been working with my father’s construction company full time since then. However, I began working part time with our company as a lowly laborer, 15 years ago when I was just old enough to drive. So over the years I gained experience and time on the jobsites, and now it looks as though he’s going to turn the reigns over to me in the next five years or so. We have just completed or biggest contract yet, a four story office building, about 85,000 square feet. The building is right across the street from a small lake where we race small boats on Thursday nights."
     "It’s agriculture here in the heartland. Up until 15 years ago, it was the driving force behind our economy. That has changed somewhat, but agriculture will always be the major thing here.When asked about family, Konrad replied, "Just me and the wife, no kids yet. The reason I began building the boat was because my wife was studying as a pre-dental student last year, and she studied about 25 hours a day. I basically lost my wife and instead had a roommate that studied in the spare bedroom all the time, whom I was vaguely aware of sleeping in my bed with me. So I needed something to do. The boat was what I did after work while my wife studied all the time. I remember I found a link to the Stevenson’s site on databoats.com early in the spring of ‘99. My wife is now in the program, I have my boat done, and the rest is history."
     I asked Konrad how he got into sailing. "That’s a really good question," he answered, "with a long boring answer, but here goes. Right at the time my wife and I got married, we were in Denver visiting her sister. We went to the Museum of Natural History (really cool place to go, they got mummies and everything) and attended an IMAX production that was on the ocean. So I was sitting there in my seat with my wife, watching the show about the ocean, and in the film they had this 5 second slow motion clip of footage of two people flying double trapped on a multi-hull sailboat, sailing in the ocean off the shore of some island, maybe Hawaii. I have no idea what the boat was. At the time I knew nothing about sailing. But it was like the world just stopped for me, and I said to myself, "I must do this. This was invented for me." So I kept that image in my mind, and when we returned to Lincoln, I started looking in the paper for boats, still with no idea whatsoever of how to sail or what I was looking for. It was like fate. One week after my experience at the IMAX, I found a Hobie 16 for sale. I bought it (paid way too much for it, being naive and uneducated) and then found out that a bunch of other nuts here in Nebraska sailed them at Branched Oak. By a Hobie, get instant friends to go with it."
     His Vacationer was Konrad’s first boat building project, "I thought it would be my last," he says, but he is already building a Wing Dingy. I’ve traded E-mail with Mike Stevenson about it a few times, and I’m going to build it lighter and more overpowered. I can get stuff lighter than 1/4" plywood. I’m going to make it really nutz. I’ll make every attempt to make it strong with some additional strength, but it may very well blow apart into a hundred pieces! LOL! But it will be a snap to build after the Vacationer, and if it breaks apart, big deal. I can salvage all of it and just rebuild a new hull. It’s only 50 buck worth of plywood. I’m basically taking Stevenson’s experimental approach to the Winger."
     "When I first began building my Vacationer, I had this grand Idea that me and my wife would eventually roadtrip it to some bigger area lakes like Lewis and Clark, and we’d stay on the boat for several nights. But I’m having a hard time finishing the interior now that the boat is seaworthy. Who wants to build the boat when you can be sailing it instead? I’ve come to realize all the fun is on the deck, or in the cockpit, so the cabin will just have to wait until this fall. For now, all my sailing this season will be at the local lake, Branched Oak. This sounds silly, but I have this goal of making Rice-a-Roni on the burner on the galley counter of my Vacationer, so eventually I will complete the interior and we will camp on the boat on weekends later in the season when the temps are a bit more reasonable during the night. 85 degrees and 70 degree dewpoint at midnight aren’t very conductive for sleeping outside, even in a boat."
     Konrad, like many, is adding that personal touch to his boat. "The rat lines I added to the side stays seem to be a big hit with the other builders on the board. They were some work, but I’m really glad I did them. I can’t imagine the boat without them, it would look naked to me. And they work too! The view up on them is about as fun as flying a hull on a Hobie. Also, my father is a bit of a sculptor, and he is in the middle of making a mermaid figurehead for the stem. With the summer heat, I suspect Miss Mermaid may not make her debut until next spring. But the price is right, so you won’t here me complaining."
     "We have an outbuilding where we keep all of our tools and stuff for our construction business. It’s bigger than two stalls, but that’s about the space I consumed for a year to build my Vacationer. The shop has no climate control, and in Nebraska, that’s bad. We have one of the harshest climates due to the fact that in one 12 month season we regularly see a temperature range of about 120 degrees. As far as tips for other builders, with out a doubt one of the best ones is sufficient lighting. Psychologists will tell you the same thing. Your productivity will be greatly increased in a well lit environment. I put an extra 1,000 watts of lighting in the form of a ten bulb string of temp construction lights up in the rafters. The difference was phenomenal. Next would come some climate control. I have no means of cooling the shop in the summer other than a squirrel cage fan, but had a torpedo style propane burner in the winter months. The drawback to that is that it has no fresh air exchange, of course, so it eventually gets pretty fumey and it also eventually burns up all your oxygen. So I wasn’t able to run it non stop. The coldest I saw the shop thermometer reading was about 15 degrees, and the hottest was somewhere around 110. That really is hard to do. Climate control will really help your progress. I have no idea how those guys like Shawn Smith in Oklahoma are doing it in their driveways."
     Some other things that interest Konrad are radio-control airplanes, shooting, and weight lifting. "I have built and flown r/c planes and gliders for about four years. I love trap shooting at the local range and in my parent’s back yard. A little 22cal. target shooting too, but the 12 gauge trap is my real love. I’ve lifted weights since college, even though I’m no Arnold. I can always tell when I’ve slacked off for a few weeks. You just feel the difference when you are exercising daily. Obviously I’m completely into multi-hull sailing." (Notice how he always comes back to that?) "I’m on my third Hobie 16, and there are much faster boats in our local fleet than the H16. We have four Miracle 20’s , a variety of Nacras, including one 6.0 meter, (way, way fast) and a smattering of other lower end cats."
     Konrad thinks that the BYYB is off to a good start. "One of the biggest challenges is going to be to capture the guys who are well on their way to completing their boats and are still non-members. Obviously, there is a definite independence about someone who would build his own boat. Getting a hold of the new guys when they are just getting started is the key. That’s when a guy will feel more of a need to belong to a supporting group like the BYYB." Konrad feels that the relationship between members and non-members needs to be handled with respect and tactfulness. " I’d really hate to ever hear that someone would stay away from a local gathering just because he was a non-member. That wouldn’t be right, at least in my book. If someone wants to remain independent, that decision can also be respected.
     Thank you Konrad, for letting me, let you tell us about your sailing passions. I especially liked the part that you called "long" and "boring".