Building and Sailing Thlaloca Dos
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Welcome to our Personal Web Site How
it all began!
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious
triumphs, even though checked by failure, than to rank with those poor
spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in the
gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."
Well, I
didn’t compose it, George Washington did! From these wise words we
derived how senseless life would be pursuing an eight to five ritual. The
Goddess of opportunity may give us a chance only once in our lifetime; we
couldn’t afford to miss it. With thirty-odd years of age, the time was
right. We (my wife and I) built ourselves a boat – not very big; 20 feet
– and off we were on the greatest adventure anyone could hope to
experience. This voyage--31/2-years, 37,000-miles--is chronicled in our book
West!
Sail West, Man!
What makes us tick?
We are
Siggi (Sigrid) and Hein Zenker, originally from Germany. Siggi was born
and raised in the Ruhr Valley; Hein in the eastern part of Germany, near
the city of Dresden. Both of us immigrated to Canada in the early fifties.
Siggi pursued a secretarial job whereas Hein worked
lumber and mining jobs. In 1959 we started building our boat-- Thlaloca (an Aztecs Goddess of water)–which we eventually
sailed around the world. After the completion of the circumnavigation, and
a voyage to Europe and back, we settled in Virginia, US. for many years
where Hein started a general contracting business, and Siggi a job as
dental assistant. There we sold our little ship and built our present
boat–THLALOCA DOS .
Not only was the voyage the culmination of a dream,
it whetted our appetites to do a lot more. Realizing that a twenty-foot
boat was far from ideal we decided building a much larger craft.
Updated 7/5/05
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