{"id":11617,"date":"2016-05-25T08:04:31","date_gmt":"2016-05-25T06:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bsrumybg.myraidbox.de\/en\/?p=11617"},"modified":"2022-06-26T16:37:50","modified_gmt":"2022-06-26T14:37:50","slug":"petit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ibiza-style.com\/en\/petit\/","title":{"rendered":"Petit \u2013 A boat built on an island that no longer exists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even at the age of 53, \u201aPetit\u2019 looks as immaculate as she did on her first day. Ensconced in her fisherman\u2019s hut on the beautiful beach of Benirr\u00e0s, ready to set sail, this llaut<\/i> was born in an Ibiza that we can barely imagine today. An Ibiza without tourists, without hotels or scarcely any buildings, a virgin land of farmers who, on occasions, had a hard time finding something to put on their plates. And that\u2019s because people really went hungry in Ibiza in those days.<\/p>\n

Joan Escandell was born and brought up in Puerto San Miguel, where his family possessed a lot of land including pine forests and areas under cultivation. At that time\u2014 we are talking about the beginning of the 1960s\u2014 the land was only worth what could be grown on it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always loved boats\u201d, says Joan. He tells us how, ever since he was a boy, he used to run down to the beach where he would watch and occasionally accompany the fishermen of the area that used to go out in their tiny recreational boats in search of a few morsels to eat. If there was anything left over, they would give it away or exchange it for potatoes with relatives and neighbours. Joan felt fascinated by the sense of freedom of life on the sea.<\/p>\n

\"petit-ibiza-style-002\"<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why, when he was barely 15 years old, he very solemnly told his father that he wanted a boat. The head of the family told him that he thought it was a good idea, although he didn\u2019t believe he would go ahead and do it until he found his son with an axe in his hand cutting down pine trees. \u201cJoanet, do you really want a boat? Where on earth are you going to get the money?\u201d With seven children to feed, his father wasn\u2019t able to give him a single cent to help him, even though he gave him the go-ahead to cut down all the pine trees he wanted. Little did he imagine then the iron will of that young man who managed to make his dream come true after two years of hard work.<\/p>\n

Joan managed to make his way to Ibiza Town, where he was introduced to Juan, the master carpenter of the boat builder, a so called \u201cMaestro de hacha\u201d who was there at that time. The craftsman motivated him to choose the kind of boat he liked most from among the ones that were there, telling him: \u201cYou\u2019ve got an eye for it; that one\u2019s got a really nice prow\u201d. So he gave him the templates for the pieces of wood that would form the boat\u2019s structure. Joan put them together before setting out on his way back home.<\/p>\n

From then on, his only aim was to build his boat. At the age of 16, he found a job building a laundry room in a farmer\u2019s house, for which he was paid six pesetas an hour: \u201cIt was a fortune in those days!\u201d With his savings he was able to get started since he already had the pine timber despite the fact he was still unable to move it. You have to bear in mind that, in those days in Puerto San Miguel, there were no saws or tools of any kind, there wasn\u2019t even electricity and you had to take the wood down to Ibiza on a cart drawn by mule so that it could be shaped by using fire to bend it, before transporting it back again, all the while taking care to not overload the wagon because the bumpy roads could cause its cargo to tip over. There weren\u2019t even any roads\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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