It cost him 12 years of his life, most of his earnings and his marriage, but this didn’t stop Alexander D’Agata from pursuing his life-long dream. He tells Ramona Depares about building his own yacht, the Sang Royal, from scratch.
Building your own boat to your own precise specifications must be every sailor’s dream. But not every sailor has the inclination, patience, or ability to actually embark on such an ambition – not to mention time-consuming – project.
Alexander D’Agata did, and the result is a 60-foot, beautiful yacht that looks for all the world like a pirate ship coming straight out of a movie – a pirate ship with all modern-day amenities and safety features, of course.
Yet, for all those who know Alexander, the feat comes as no surprise. As his partner insists, Alexander “must have been a sea captain in a past lifetime”. The passion kicked off aged eight, when a young Alexander found a broken-down old model of a boat with the back part missing.
“It bothered me so much, I just had to fix it. So I found some debris off the beach and, bonding it together with hot tar off the street, I managed to make this boat whole again. Well, maybe there is some truth to what my girlfriend says,” Alexander laughs.
The hull is made of solid steel, which is rounded, making this a complete novelty today
For someone who has been sailing for something close to 42 years, this is hardly surprising. Alexander has fond memories of his first boat, the 16-foot Graduate sailboat that Alexander and his brother named Pippa.
“One of my fondest teenage memories is sailing to Gozo on it with a friend of mine and staying there for a month and a half, camping on the beautiful beach at Ramla l-Ħamra and sailing all day. I felt just like Robinson Crusoe with his Man Friday,” he reminisces.
Back to his current boat, even here the story actually started ages ago, when Alexander was still in school, in fact. Every day, on the way to De La Salle College, the school bus would pass by an old shipyard in Marsa. From his seat on the bus, Alexander could clearly see this huge yacht behind a wall. Through the years that followed, the yacht was stripped bare until only the steel structure remained.
“I watched its steady deterioration and couldn’t keep my eyes off it and promised myself that one day I would get involved in boats one way or another.”
Time went by, and when Alexander left school he joined the Cresta Quay beach club at St George’s Bay, becoming a qualified sailing instructor at age 18. However, memory of the old, neglected yacht that he had gotten so used to on his way to work never completely left his mind.
“I was also fascinated because the yacht’s history is really interesting. She was built in 1946 for a Dutch captain, who sadly died before actually sailing her. She was then bought by a Greek tycoon, who sailed the yacht from Holland to the Greek islands, where she remained for 22 years. The boat eventually got very run down, so an English company bought it to rebuild it for chartering purposes,” Alexander says.
The company, however, went bankrupt before the project could be completed and the idea was shelved. A few years later, a Maltese gentleman bought it with the idea of bringing her back to her former glory. He dismantled the boat bit by bit, bringing it down to an empty hull. However, he too ran out of money and found that he couldn’t continue the project after all. The yacht was left derelict in a Marsa scrapyard for 15 years.
As soon as Alexander discovered that the yacht was up for sale, he knew he had to catch his childhood dream, bartering with the owner until he eventually managed to purchase it “for a song”. His wife at the time was not best pleased, particularly because a few years earlier, Alexander had pumped all his savings into his marine shop, D’Agata Marine.
“As you can imagine, there was precious little money to go around, let alone to blow it on a skeleton of a beat-up old boat, which was all rusty and falling to pieces, and which was little more than scrap. But I was hooked. And that spelt the beginning of an incredible journey of joy, heartache, times of madness, desperation and elation, as the boat progressed to where she is now.”
What makes Alexander’s story even more incredible, however, is the fact that he never got involved with any marine architect to assist in the eventual design of the yacht. Describing the whole restoration process as “putting pen to paper and working from the grassroots upwards”, Alexander ended up making countless artificial mock-ups from scrap wood to try to visualise what the finished product would look like.
“Luckily, I was quite familiar with sailing boats of all sizes through my work at Cresta Quay and at D’Agata Marine, so it wasn’t so terribly daunting. I had the support of numerous yachting people, who travelled around the world and came into my shop regularly, where we’d have incredible brainstorming sessions on so many different aspects. The easy part was putting pen to paper. The more challenging aspect involved making the dream a reality,” he explains.
A project of this magnitute, when approached in the traditional manner – maybe in a German shipyard – would typically take 18 months from start to finish, with a team of some 15 people working constantly on it. Since Alexander didn’t quite have the funds for that, he needed to find an alternative avenue to make the project work.
“The fact that there was no deadline was a bonus and I did most of the things myself, which made the project financially feasible. It cost me 12 long years... and my marriage... until I got the yacht into the water. The toiling was made easier by some really capable engineers, and also by my late father-in-law, who was always there to give advice and to lend an ear.”
And in case you are wondering about the end result of this massive project, Alexander specifically designed the yacht so he could sail her single-handedly. The whole boat is constructed by hand and the hull itself is made of solid steel, which is rounded, making this a complete novelty today.
As soon as you enter the cabin, you are greeted with the lovely smell of wood. Internally, Alexander used a combination of various woods, like cherry, teak, mahogany and cedar. Sang Royal is kitted out with a larger-than-usual saloon, with lots of head room; she has three cabins with a total of six berths, one en-suite bathroom and a toilet, a fully-functional kitchen with two freezers, microwave and oven, and even a specially-designed retractable folding stool to reach up to the cupboards, in case you happen to be on the petite side. The saloon table can retract into the floor and can be converted into an additional double berth.
Alexander is also proud of the fact that she is “a cruising champion”, explaining that for a boat to prove herself, she has to be an all-weather boat, something that the Sang Royal has proven to be, mainly thanks to the fact that Alexander designed the sails to have a greater sail area.
“Because of this, I had to put more weight into the keel by incorporating more steel blocks to help her sail in the toughest of conditions. Everybody said I was absolutely crazy, but this proved to be one her strongest points. All you need to do is reef the sails and she moves like the wind – perfect for the long haul.”
The yacht has two masts and is designed to sail with six sails, all of which work on rotary systems. The helm station has all the necessary navigational equipment to facilitate the safest of journeys; no need to go down below to look at charts, as the helm has the necessary chart work available on a touch screen.
“I know every nook and cranny and we understand each other perfectly. My partner and I were gobsmacked on our last three-week sailing adventure, as countless other boats would actually circle ours for a closer look. Everyone was giving us the thumbs up, and some actually invited themselves on board,” Alexander says.
The biggest challenge to make this dream reality was the financial tightrope that Alexander was walking, together with the difficulty in juggling his boating business and this time-consuming project. Dark moments, he tells me, there were aplenty, particularly when the necessary equipment was lacking.
“Luckily, life has a strange way of working out. When your back is really against the wall, then the right person, circumstance or incidence will magic itself up and give us the solution. There wasn’t a moment where I really considered giving up, as that would have spelt failure, proving to people in the trade (many of whom thought I was totally bonkers, on the quiet) that I couldn’t see the job through.”
Today, these dark moments are forgotten in the sun of numerous pleasure trips with his partners and regular business trips sailing to Sicily. His advice to those who decide to take this DIY route?
“Think carefully and wisely. But if you have a dream and a passion, go for it. Do your homework well and be open to advice.”