Schooner Ixdos – 2008

The Schooner Christian Foundation is a charity with the objective of building a small ship capable of carrying a mobile mother and child health clinic to island peoples lacking such a facility. An additional objective is to carry equipment for drilling for water with the intention of providing sustainable drinking water systems wherever needed.

The Schooner Ixdos is being built by the foundation in Phuket and has been designed as a sailing ship with an auxiliary engine. In the forward section, space has been allocated for a clinic with overhead access to allow stretcher cases to be lowered. 6 double cabins will accommodate a professional team to crew the ship and staff the clinic.

Building was originally funded privately. After the Asian tsunami the need became quite apparent and donations were accepted in order to speed up construction. The ship is now more than half built and funds are sought in order to finish building and to become operational.

Clinic
Clinic Hatch

Thanks to the kind and continued support of the Brothers of St Andrew, All Saints Watsonville, California, our friends from California and New York, the PTA of the British International School, Phuket, the parents of children I teach in Phuket, and brothers and sisters from the House of the Lord, Phuket, we have managed to work steadily through the summer holidays and have made significant progress. Especial thanks to Dan Letton who came for his summer holiday and worked relentlessly to provide us with flooring in the bilges to enable us to carry medical stores, general stores, and anchor cable. We are now gearing up to order the last delivery of steel so that we can complete our engine room and install the engine. We are ready to make stainless steel water tanks. We have prepared the poop and await funds to buy paint.
Patrick Vickers – Schooner Ixdos – Phuket - August 2008

Guardian Buffalo
Overtime
Monsoon
December 2007
For'ard
Clinic hatch
Deckhouse
Chainplates
Engine room - fuel tanks
Poop
Cockpit
Davits
Schooner Ixdos – July 2007
Deckhouse
Schooner Ixdos – June 2007
Poop Deck
Cockpit
Transom
Bulwarks
Schooner Ixdos – March 2007
Schooner Ixdos – February 2007
Schooner Ixdos – January 2007
Schooner Ixdos – Christmas 2006

We hope you will enjoy this update to our web-site so kindly completed by my son Simon Aran in Wales.

We have now identified the location where we intend to carry out the next phase of construction: Thai Marine, Phuket, who are generously prepared to have us free of charge.

We did as much as possible at Khun Luck’s workshop. A strong 8 wheeled trailer has been built and our schooner is now resting on it. Two factors prevented further construction there: the weight of more steel and the height of the deckhouse as we have to navigate some bridges. The framework for the poop deck and cockpit is in place but the deck is not. We must weigh about 13 tons at the moment and I felt it was prudent to hold the next delivery of steel until we arrive at our new site. The bridges are 5m and our height on trailer is not far off that.

Our next jobs are to plate the poop and cockpit, and to construct the deckhouse.

In June Phuket was blessed with an interesting visit from the good ship Doulos. Their engineers set to work designing systems for us and actually combined a compressor and accumulator to make our fresh water system. My son Johnny was inspired by the crew of Doulos and was accepted to join the ship on a 2 month STEP programme when he received some exciting training.

During the year following our appeal we have been blessed with donations amounting to 651,465 Baht (GBP 9,300, US$ 18,000) from more than 300 kind folk all over the world together with various other gifts.

Recent donations for which we are very grateful come from: a coffee morning held by the congregation of St Mary’s Trimley, England, a school fete held by Horizons Learning Centre, Phuket, the sale of our T shirts at the Community Church of Chiang Mai, and from the Brothers of St Andrew, Watsonville, California, together with a number of personal donations. Rotary, Phuket have confirmed that they will provide us with medicine for our clinic.

I continue to raise funds by teaching mathematics and my state pension helps.

Construction costs so far amount to 2,696,000 Baht
(GBP 38,500, US$72,900) and I estimate we are about 60% of the way.

Thank you indeed for your thoughts, prayers and contributions. Our huge leap in faith has been sustained by your enthusiasm and we anticipate with excitement the eventual launching of Schooner Ixdos.

With Love

Patrick

Patrick Vickers
P.O. Box 315,
A. Muang,
Phuket P.O.,
Phuket 83000
Thailand
Tel: +66 (0) 84 176 1832
pat @ mission-ship.com