Kenneth had been at work on a boat for some time when the foregoing conversation took place. He had planned her himself, plotting out her lines with great care and with all the enthusiasm of a boy who has the means at last to carry out a long-cherished idea.
She was to be thirty feet over all, twenty-two feet on the water-line, nine feet wide, and three feet draught with her centre-board up. His idea was to make her yawl-rigged and as strong and staunch as good material and careful workmanship could ensure.
For a workshop he had to be content with a woodshed at the back of his father’s house, a good three-fourths of a mile from the Lake shore of St. Joseph, Michigan.
Fortunately, he was able to get some extra fine white oak, well seasoned, from a nearby mill; and though it was tough and tried the temper of his home-made tools, this very toughness and hardness stood the young ship-builder and his crew in good stead later.
He built a steaming-box to bend the ribs and planking of his boat out of rough lumber, and made an old stove, with a section of big pipe plugged up at both ends, serve as a boiler to make the steam. Thus equipped, he began the work unaided of building a thirty-foot yacht in which to cruise around on Lake Michigan and the waters tributary to it. With great labor and care the keel was steamed, bent, and laid on the blocks; then one by one the ribs were put in place. It was slow work, but it was extremely interesting to this young naval architect and ship-builder, and as his boat grew his ideas enlarged. To be a naval architect had been his ambition ever since he had left high school. To become a designer and builder of ships was his aim in life, and as he worked alone at his little ship, he wondered how he was going to get the experience that would be needed to design vessels for various uses and differing conditions. About lake craft he knew something, but of ocean and river vessels he was entirely ignorant. He made up his mind that he must see and study the different kind of craft in their native waters.
One day, as he was working on the planking of his boat, the inspiration came to him. He had pulled the plank out of the long steam-box, hot, damp, and more or less pliable, and with great labor made it fast to the cut-water with a hand vise. As he bent the plank from rib to rib he secured it until it was in place and followed the designed curve. He stood a minute facing the bow to see if the curve was true. It really began to look like a boat and less like a skeleton.
“This is going to be a pretty smart craft,” he said to himself as he eyed his work lovingly. “She’ll be strong and handy, roomy and seaworthy, and fit to go most anywhere.”
“By Jove!” he said aloud, slapping his knee by way of emphasis, and sitting down suddenly.
“Why not?” The idea was so bold that he hardly dared to think of it. Sail to the ocean in a craft only thirty feet long? Impossible; but why? He could hardly wait to secure the plank permanently, he was so anxious to look at a map and see if there was a possible route to the salt sea that his vessel could follow.
The rest of that day was spent in studying maps, and for a good part of the night Kenneth and his father discussed it.