The following was written by Pedro Cabral regarding a classic cruising trimaran – the OLYMPUS PHOTO II. Pedro is trying to help a friend (Zé Lopes) be able to restore this Dick Newick Designed multihull.

This old tri has quite a history behind it. Pedro asked me if I could share this with others throughout the multihull community despite the obvious challenges of helping his friend Zé restore the boat in this tough economy.

With that being said, I think you’ll enjoy the photos (and short story) that goes along with this boat.
— Joe F

…………

Help for the Olympus Photo II Trimaran
by Pedro Cabral

Olympus Photo II is a Newick design, loosely based on Mike McMullen’s THREE CHEERS. She was built to replace Mike Birch’s famous Olympus Photo I, which won the first Route du Rhum.

Mike Birch raced Olympus II in the 1980 OSTAR and finished 4th.

Sometime later, during another race, she capsized near the American coast and the freighter which rescued the crew rammed her repeatedly so she would go down (insurance issues I suppose).

Somehow the boat, lacking a float and most of the bow, managed to float half way across the Atlantic back to the Azores. She was recovered by a local fellow, named Deocleciano, who sailed her near Azores for a few years.

Later a friend of mine, Zé Lopes, who was returning from South Africa in a Van de Stadt he’d bought in Tristão da Cunha, after having lost his previous boat there, bought Olympus II from Ponta Delgada’s sailing club. And here starts the sad part of the story of this amazing guy and his boat.

The guy who’d recovered Olympus in the Azores used a local type of softwood and poor glues to rebuild the boat. This wood, called Criptomeria, has the nasty property of absorbing tons of water and is prone to dry rot. Zé had lots of problems getting Olympus II safely to the Brazilian coast, his cruising destination for the first trip.

Having arrived down there, he managed to find some temporary jobs and somehow repaired the boat to a safe condition for sailing. He spent a couple of years sailing up and down the South American coast and then he decided to return to Portugal to give Olympus a major overhaul.

When he arrived here in Portugal (in Alhandra) inbound from Brazil, Olympus II was in a bad shape, but still well within restoration.

Zé spent all he had working under sun and rain to repair Olympus and she was almost done when he started realizing that he’d been fooled with the marine plywood he’d bought: The material came from a supplier’s defective batch and all the effort of half a dozen years was lost. The plywood started to de-laminate and rot … so down the drain went Zé Lopes’s lifetime savings.

Now Zé is struggling to have food on his table and keep Olympus II afloat at the same time. The boat has reached a condition beyond repair for a guy with Zé’s poor resources. Here in Portugal it is very difficult to direct efforts to this cause because people and companies here simply don’t give a damn about sailing boats and everyone looks at Zé Lopes as just “another hobo looking for an easy living” kind of thing.

This isn’t the case at all. The man loves his boat, loves to sail, he’s the most peculiar, polite and friendly guy I’ve ever met and almost out of desperation after yesterday’s fight to bring her up from the bottom of the river (which we somehow managed to do), I decided I’d make this my own personal quest too.

The possibilities in Portugal are exhausted and I decided to start looking abroad for someone willing to help. Maybe someone knows someone who knows someone with a friend an uncle or whoever with an idea or a connection to get things going again for Zé.

Who knows, famous boats are famous boats and miracles sometimes happen 🙂
I’m attaching various pictures from Zé and his boat just in case.

Kind regards from Portugal,
— Pedro

Anyone interested in possibly helping Pedro and his friend Zé may contact them at the following blogpage that Pedro has started for this purpose …
http://otrimaran.blogspot.pt/2012/05/olympus-photo-ii.html