I love building ships. There’s no other way to say it. With their complex blend of curves and uncanny smoothness, they pose a very special sort of challenge when it comes to LEGO building. Well, that being said, although LEGO ships may be a passion of mine, I never expected to see one of my ships displayed as a permanent exhibit in a museum—still less to sell one for just over $10,000 USD through Creations for Charity with a fully paid trip to Brazil thrown into the bargain!

The Best Laid Plans…

My journey opened at the beginning of 2020 when I started on my largest and longest LEGO project to date: a 72-gun galleon called the Bucanneer's Dread. I’d ambitiously planned to build it entirely in one month, and take it to Brickworld Chicago that Spring, but… With three days left before our trip to the States and little more than the hull and start of the second deck, the whole world shut down due to COVID. I was then able to lean back and say, “Well, I’ve probably got another month.”

Well, we all know how that went. Ended up being a little longer than that!

But, besides getting three more years to finish building, I actually got an awesome offer of a number of custom lighting kits from Lightaling in the meantime, so I’m not complaining!

Anyways - fast forward those three years, a couple of successful conventions, and tons of hours tying rigging later, I was planning on tearing the ship down and sorting it back out into its component pieces as I do with all my builds. That’s when my sister, Geneva, and some of my friends suggested selling the model. Geneva was donating a build of her own to Creations for Charity, and it instantly seemed like the perfect fit, a great way to find a home for the model, and support an amazing cause at the same time. Less than a week later, the team from Creations for Charity and I were talking logistics with the Museu da Imaginacao in Sao Paulo, Brazil and about all the details of the sale and set-up!

Weigh Anchor! All Ahead Flank!

In the end we settled for February of this year for the delivery. After packing the ship away in a custom wood-reinforced box in layers and layers of plastic wrap, paper, styrofoam, bubble wrap, and a retaining wall of LEGO bricks I built to keep the decks from getting smashed together, I flew with it down to Chile, South America in December of last year. I made the final trip to Brazil a few months later.

All in all it was quite the voyage that the old vessel embarked upon before reaching its final destination, well over 13,000 miles!

Arrival at Port: Dry Dock

I arrived in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Saturday the 11th, and checked into my hotel. My room was on the 18th floor, and had a lovely view of the city, just a few miles from the museum. It was rather late by the time I arrived, so I went to bed, had a restful Sunday, and then headed to the museum on Monday morning to begin the set-up.

Turns out the Museu da Imaginacao is closed to visitors on Mondays, so I did a little bit of work (opening the baggage and suchlike), and left the rest for later when there would be others around to appreciate the process as well. The case was still in its proper form, but rattled considerably after all the flights. So I was delighted to see that it survived the journey super well, though I did have to disassemble it some more on arrival to have access to the lower decks. Very few pieces were broken, or hard to find out where they were supposed to go.

Parts and wiring everywhere! I had removed the second deck to make sure all the cannons on the lower deck were in place and functioning.

To be sure, I had already re-assembled it several times at this point which certainly made it less difficult!

This is the ship in probably its most wrecked-looking state!

Tuesday and Wednesday, I was back at the museum rebuilding, and occasionally re-wiring, for about 7-8 hours each! So it was really fulfilling when, on Thursday morning, we finished getting the electric plug-in for the lights, the glass display protection in place, and everything ready by about 2 pm at its final location.

The fourteen-year-old son of one of the museum management workers named Gustavo came along to help get the sails up the second day. It was a lot of fun seeing how much he enjoyed LEGO and being there helping out. His dream is to become a LEGO artist himself one day. Carrying the finished model about fifty feet from the room I’d rebuilt it into the exhibit hall was a rather nerve-wracking moment. We’d already had the sails topple over once when somebody touched it, but it wasn't a major mishap, and we got everything back in order in about fifteen minutes. Fortunately, it all got there safely and without any issues at all!

Gabrielle Cavalera who was in charge of all things LEGO at the museum and was helping out got to stand holding tangled masts for probably well over two hours the second day as I unraveled and rebuilt them though—I'm very grateful for his assistance! I must also give a shout-out to everybody else at the museum who I very much enjoyed talking and hanging out with, and especially to Paulo Takahashi the project coordinator (who spoke in fluent English) - and a thanks to everyone else who had to endure my Portuñol, as they call it.

The Captain’s Mess: The Yolk’s On You!

After finishing at the museum I was both hungry and pretty exhausted—no fault of the museum team, though, who took care to feed me well the whole time I was there. First things first, I grabbed a pizza from the mall across the street from my hotel.

Apparently, it’s what they call a “Portuguese” pizza—my Portuguese wasn’t quite good enough for me to be expecting the hard-boiled eggs on it until afterward though! Gotta admit it was better than you might expect, at least. Either that, or I was extremely hungry, ‘cause I certainly enjoyed it/

Next, since I was leaving to fly back to Chile the next day, I had to take advantage of getting in a swim on the hotel roof pool before I left, in spite of the rain and the thunderstorm. It poured almost every evening I was there, even though the days were gorgeous! I got completely drenched walking back from the mall anyway, so I figured it couldn’t hurt, although I did wait 30 minutes after I ate…

Time To Set Sail

All in all, it was an amazing experience, and I highly enjoyed my week in Brazil. I’d like to add a big thank you and call out to everybody at Creations for Charity (C4C) and to the team at the Museu da Imaginacao for making it possible. I am so blessed to have had this opportunity and to have been able to help support the work the C4C team does with children all over the world!

Best of BrickNerd - Article originally published April 24, 2023.

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