SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - "She's pretty small," joked Bruce Elliott, as he steps onto the dusty, still-in-construction frame of his catamaran.

Actually, it's massive. The boat, destined to be 34-feet wide and 77-feet long, is likely the largest of its kind in Canada, if not North America, guessed Elliott.

Bruce Elliott stands with one of the mammoth hulls of his catamaran-in-progress, The Snow Leopard. - Lauren McKeon/NNSL photo

In its third year of construction, the boat will, if all goes according to plan, be on water by the end of next year. Elliott, who heads Fibreglass North, has three full-time staff working hard to complete it.

To be dubbed The Snow Leopard, the boat will travel the Mackenzie River, then to Alaska, finishing its first run in Nanaimo, B.C. There it will be outfitted with a 100-foot mast - a process too extensive to complete in Yellowknife. Until then, the catamaran will be motor-powered. Sharon Elliott, Bruce's wife of over 20 years, said the couple's plan is to retire together on it. The couple will spend their land time at their new home on Vancouver Island, selling time shares for The Snow Leopard while not at sea, and then sail the world aboard their home away from home.

Bruce, born in Auckland, New Zealand, has always loved boats, his wife said, and inherited the affection from his father - his mother hated boats. Of taking the eventual plunge, so to speak, into building the giant, Sharon said: "I said to him you better get going, we're not getting any younger. So that's why we started."

Elliott devised the plan for the catamaran, which is a type of boat where the frame is supported by two hulls, with Derek Kelsall, an innovator in multi-hulled boats based in New Zealand.

Both Elliotts are looking forward to getting the boat put together and the frame out of the huge shed it's sheltered in. After all, said Sharon, "It's more fun to see the world than to sit in a house and clean it."