Couple find new purpose in traditional boat building

Ioanna Moutousidi and Yannis Borbandonakis’ workshop on Syros, where they decided to live as traditional wooden boat builders. Ioanna grew up in Halkida and came to Syros to study at University of the Aegean, where she met Yannis, a Cretan, who worked in sailing tourism and shipyards. They got to know the art through an old master, Nikos Daroukakis. They studied at the Albaola International Shipbuilding School in the Basque Country. “Despite our centuries-old tradition, we did not support wood-building as a country, we did not keep the wooden boat culture alive,” they said.