Jochen Mueller: The boat on his bucket list

Jul 22, 2010

Jochen Mueller and his Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter courtesy of Lynn Shwadchuck

When Jochen Mueller was 12, he crossed the ocean from England on a steamer that landed him and his family in Toronto. He spent many days of his youth immersed in the playground that the shores of Lake Ontario offered him, building model sail boats and barges from old milk cartons and two by fours he found.

Model making became a career for Mueller, and he has worked on a number of projects under well-known Canadian architects Arthur Erickson and Moshe Safdie, and with Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei. He also worked on models for the EXPO 1967.

When he was building models in England back in the 1970s he would spend his days off at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England on board the Cutty Sark and the H.M.S. Victory. It was in 1976 at a local bookstore there where he came across a book on sailing vessels and fell in love with the Bristol Channel Pilot Cutters. These boats were made circa 1830 before the steam engine and were designed to bring a pilot aboard larger ocean-going vessels to help steer them into the harbour. Jochen decided this was a model boat that he was going to build.

Last year after two years of ill health when he came uncomfortably close to dying, Jochen made a conscious decision to ”shorten the list of the unfinished business in his life”.

So last winter at the age of 66, Jochen set to work designing his Cutter which, all told took him roughly 300 hours to build. He modeled his boat after a 30 foot cutter and scaled it down 12-1, his finished boat measuring 30 inches in length.

In his words, “I wanted to make the boat in the spirit of a 12-year-old, so the only tools I used were an exacto knife and a little hand saw.”

The hull was made from a hollowed piece of basswood; the keel is solid brass and the deck mahogany. The masts were made from B.C. red cedar and for the sail he used cotton ticking.

One of the most challenging undertakings was the science and math involved to figure out the boat's displacement. “I spent many days in September and early October and again in the early spring standing in some very cold water to get it just right.”

The best feature about the boat is that you can actually sail it. It has a two-circuit radio controller, one for the mast and one for the rudder, and Jochen has successfully sailed it close to a dozen times.

Now at the age of 66 he has crossed that life long dream project off his bucket list. When I ask him ”What's next?” he replied, “I don't think I’m going to live long enough to invest my curiosity into the so many things that I am interested in, but that being said, I do have the rough castings for a steam engine that I own and I am also hoping to build a variety of geodesic domes using fence posts and rope and I may yet build myself a 10 foot tender but not this winter mind you.” This winter Jochen will be painting a series of new works.

When Jochen is not busy tending to his bucket list he can often be found painting at his home /studio in Plevna. He is a member of the Land O 'Lakes Artisans’ Guild and you can see some of his work by visiting www.landolakesartisans.org