A Short History of the Ship Avany
The motor-sailor Avany was built in 1989-90 on a riverbank in southern Brazil by an Italian family of boatbuilders, using traditional methods and the finest tropical hardwoods. Her designer and original owner was Frank Walker, a Brazilian industrialist who planned
to spend some time traveling aboard with his family, and then expected his sons to use the ship for a chartering business in the Caribbean. After an initial voyage in the southern Atlantic, they brought the ship up through
the Caribbean to Savannah, Georgia, where they intended to install new engines, air conditioning, and other mechanical improvements, as well as rigging it as a three- masted staysail schooner.
Other demands captured the attention of the Walker family for many years, and during the summer of 2000 we found the ship still waiting in the Palmer- Johnson boatyard, her beautiful brightwork bleached by the sun, and her bottom heavily encrusted with marine life, but otherwise sound.
By the time we made contact with Mr. Walker, he was looking for a buyer, and liking our vision for the ship, he gave us a good price. After considerable effort to put her mechanical systems in order, and to haul, scrape, and paint her bottom and topsides, we motored out of the boatyard in September, looking for a home port.
Most of the following eight or nine months were spent at anchor in various harbors along the southeast Atlantic coast from Beaufort, South Carolina, to Palm Beach, Florida, until we finally settled down in Brunswick, Georgia, in the spring of 2001.
Since then we have worked hard at upgrading her mechanical and electrical systems, as well as designing a practical and aesthetically pleasing barquentine rig.
This is the “Tole Mour,” a ship of similar dimensions to ours, whose barquentine rig we used as a pattern for the design of our rig.
We expect the rigging of our ship to be completed sometime in early 2007, when we hope to set sail for the first time under the name Peacemaker, which expresses in a word our vocation as a people. Our vision for the ship is to be a seagoing representation of the life of peace and unity that our twelve tribes are living on land in our many communities around the world. It will also provide apprenticeship opportunities for our youth to learn many valuable and practical skills, not only in rigging, sailmaking, sailing, navigation, marine mechanics and carpentry, but also in living and working together in tight quarters, as well as many cross-cultural experiences traveling from port to port.