The 68-year-old, born in Salzburg, created a yacht that normally cannot be built by one man alone. Its "renaissance" impresses with its size and perfect workmanship.
Sometimes, according to Brandstätter, he asks himself how he managed all of this. His yacht is 23 meters long, five meters wide and displaces 48 tons. The trained carpenter has invested 80,000 working hours in his work.
He had a lot of problems to contend with. The hardest blow to the neck overtook him when he had the yacht, about ten years ago, as good as finished. An accident ruined almost all of his work. But instead of giving up, Helmut Brandstätter, who has been meeting friends of the Cologne base of the Trans-Ocean Association in Cologne-Rodenkirchen for many years to exchange ideas, continued.
How he built his boat, how long it took, what problems he had to struggle with, and how he ultimately managed, you can read in the new edition of YACHT (issue 24/2007), starting tomorrow, Wednesday November 14th Kiosk.