Ship navigates to love

Dubai: Indian expatriate Abdul Rauof Kotekar's hobby of making model ships attracted a woman who later became his wife, and it also helped him land a job in Dubai.

His eyes light up when he draws back the plastic covering his latest work, an 8-foot high schooner, which looks like it came straight out of Pirates of the Caribbean.

The sleek, teak-wood of the ship's hull gives off a polished shine and you can imagine the smell of the sea and the screeching of seagulls, even in this hot and humid atmosphere of the warehouse in Al Quoz.

Kotekar has named his work of love "Noor," which is Arabic for light and worked on it for six months.

Model-ship building seems to be more of a passion than a hobby for the expat who works in Dubai and lives in Umm Al Quwain. He used the dedicate time to draw plans for the model and worked on it for eight hours on Fridays and Saturdays, his weekly days off. Weekdays he laboured over the model for three hours daily, he says.

The sail masts are shovel handles and shisha pipes. "Everything I got for free," he says. Kotekar definitely has an eye for detail and there are even tiny lifeboats and an eagle on the foremast.

The teak wood for the 180-kilogramme Noor came from India. "Every time my friends came from India they brought with them some strips of teak wood," he said. The rest he got from discards from factories in Al Quoz. His wife shares his passion and helped string the twine for the sails through the wooden tiny pegs.

"My wife came to Mangalore as a tourist and she saw one of the models I'd made which was kept as a showpiece in a South-Indian restaurant," he said. Her parents wanted to know who made the model ship and made efforts to find out where Kotekar lived. "The family visited my home and that's how we saw each other."

Kotekar's love for ships started when he visited shipyards with his father who supplied timber to ship builders. He later decided to showcase his models in the UAE at the Dubai Shopping Festival. But the cargo got delayed and the festival ended. When his boss-to-be read about his models, Kotekar gifted him a ship and was offered a job.

Noor is 14 feet long and is on a wooden stand and it can be disassembled easily, he says. The sails are made up of white fabric and seem ready to sail as soon as the breeze blows.

Kotekar has never been on a ship out at sea or studied boats. "I have only taken the abra," he laughs and adds that all his knowledge of boats is from photographs in magazines. "It's mostly from my imagination," he says referring to the design of the schooner.

He has big plans for his ship: He hopes to gift it to His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.

"Somebody offered me a few thousands to buy this ship, but I refused," he says.

Kotekar's other hobby is carving Arabic calligraphy in wood. "It took me an hour to do this," he said showing an intricate piece. "But you have to be very careful because even a curve out of place is a huge mistake."