MEET THE WOODEN BRAZILIAN SCHOONER WHO STOLE OUR HEARTS AND BECAME THE HOME WHERE OUR MOST DARING DREAMS LIVE.
THIS IS YABÁ…
... a massive wooden schooner built traditionally in Bahia, Brazil.
When we bought Yabá she was not doing very well... we literally bought a sinking boat that had worms eating her hull and an incredible amount of rot caused by freshwater infiltrations. But when we saw Yabá we saw beyond its looks or size or problems. Yabá meant a lot of our dreams coming true all at once.
The thing is...when we decided to make the ocean our home, we also got really tempted to make the ocean our office. As we are both dive professionals, we started dreaming of a boat that would allow us to help more people fall in love with the ocean... both above and below. Looking at Yabá, can you see it? The space, the comfort, the robustness...
We are also very close to our family and friends... so living this adventure without them wouldn’t mean the same to us. Yabá can offer a house-like comfort and motion stability that can allow us to even receive grandparents on board.
Being sustainable and able to sail with the winds was also a must and this schooner is a sailor... and that’s quite a rare find.
Of course a lot of work needs to be done... But what it offers in exchange is a unique opportunity to live on board, teach on board, travel the world and be close to our loved ones in a way no other boat we found could do.
So yeah...we fell for it.
ABOUT YABÁ
Yabá is about 20 meters long, but with the swimming platform and the bowsprit she's actually a lot longer, reaching 88 feet (27 meters). Her beam is 19 feet (6 meters).
It has two masts and 4 sails. All the sails work with a furling system and the 4th one is a mainsail with a boom (on top of the pilothouse).
Originally its hull was made of Jack Tree (Artocarpus heterophyllus), the deck out of Jataipeba (Dialium guianense) and the structure out of Sucupira (Pterodon emarginatus) and Vinhático (Plathymenia reticulata). Now with the rebuild, the wood of choice was Garapeira (Apuleia leiocarpa), which is a wood widely used for boat building in Brazil for offering (quoting the shipwrights) the perfect balance of hardness, durability and workability.
WHAT DOES YABÁ MEAN?
In Tupi, the language of a native tribe in Brazil, Yabá/Jabá means to run away, hide away, travel away.
But the strength of Yabá’s name comes from somewhere else. In the afro religions rooted in Brazil, Yabá is the word used to refer to all the female orixás, the god-like entities that carry the power of nature within them. When we say Yabá above all we think of Iemanjá, the queen of the seas, who protects all creatures, sailors and fisherman. When we are out at sea with Yabá we are never alone and, besides the religious background, all protection is welcome!