POSTED BY Suzi Craig

Mar 30, 2012

Friday Lunch: Dave Murphy and His Dream Boat

This Friday Lunch, Fathom was visited by Dave Murphy and his fellow Oil Drum Art board members, Jack Lardis and Donna Donovan. Dave has been working on an amazing local, and soon-to-be global, community project that he hopes (and we do too) Fathom can participate in.

A close-up of Dave's catamaran, size small

A master woodworker and former MadMen-like advertising exec, Dave has built a catamaran for off-shore fishing that communities in developing countries can construct themselves from oil drums and easily accessible materials. The project began as a way to help raise funds for Oil Drum Art. Quickly, Dave saw that the project had bigger possibilities.

One of the biggest challenges in developing countries is building a self-sustaining economy that improves the quality of life. But, fishing is something any shoreline community can do if they have the means. Working with Paul Gemme of Hartford-based Our Piece of the Pie, as well as naval architects and a host of other experts, Dave wanted to confirm that the catamaran could be built with minimal boat building skills. They brought in high school students to build the prototype from Dave’s original scale model. The boat will be placed in the water at the end of this month (details tk) and Oil Drum Art is hosting an event on April 27 to raise awareness and funds for the project.

As for Fathom’s involvement, we are currently discussing where to best put our talents and time. There are several parts of this project that really get us jazzed. Few projects allow for opportunities with the local community to get involved, in a very hands-on way, that will also impact the lives of people we don’t know across the world. We had a lot of ideas flying around — from getting other high schools or community groups to build more catamarans and race them (Robotics-style) to finding ways to get corporate sponsors involved to make the project fundable and scaleable. Wherever this project takes us, Fathom is excited to be a part of it. We’ll let you know how we decide to help out and where you can participate too.

Until then, here are some pics that we took of the visit:

Dave Murphy, making an entrance into Friday Lunch

Dave telling us the story of how the catamaran project came to be

Jack Lardis tells us about Oil Drum Art

Fathom listens in

The scale model and strategic plans are at our disposal

Future catamaran mascot? He's not much of a water dog . . .

Each Friday, the Fathom crew comes together at 12:15 to eat lunch, talk about the week and discuss a topic of interest. Since what happens at Fathom doesn’t have to stay at Fathom (well, mostly), we use our blog to share the conversations that we hope will interest you too.

Posted by: Suzi Craig
Email the author: suzi@fathom.net