Eisenhower was in the White House and Sputnik was in orbit when Leland Parsons vowed he would one day launch a sailboat he had built himself.

If all goes according to plan, that day comes a week from tomorrow.

"Better late than never," he said.

Leland and his wife, Cecily, began building a 65-foot-long schooner outside their Poway home 29 years ago. The project stopped and started again and again. Presidential administrations came and went. Their town became a city. Their children grew up. All the while, the Parsonses never lost sight of their goal.

"We figured five years," Leland said about his original plan to built the boat. "In the shipyards, they built these things in six or seven months. Had I thought it would be 28 years, I don't know if I would have gone through with it."

The result of their endurance is the Frank Edmund, a sleek, dark-green gaff-rigged schooner, custom-made from keel to topmast, named after his father-in-law, Frank Edmund Garretson. Her deck is 54 feet long and 16 feet across, and the boat is 65 feet long measured from the bowsprit to the davit, the crane over the stern. The Frank Edmund will draw six feet of water once launched.

Procrastinators everywhere may find hope in the three-decade saga of the boat, built in spite of the time-robbing conspiracies that leave garages cluttered, books unread and letters unwritten. Sporadic spurts of interest inched the project forward until there was no turning back; too much had been invested and too much time devoted to settle for a very large nautical lawn ornament.

"There were heart-aching times, wondering if we'd finish it and how horrible it would be to have this unfinished boat in the back yard," Cecily said. "But we've had so many people rooting for us."

The Parsons feared their boat would be lost just 19 months ago when the 2003 wildfires swept through Poway neighborhoods and burned down nearby homes. The fire came within 150 feet of the boat, which they kept safe by spraying water on a canvas that covered it.

Bill Clark, owner of Clark Custom Boats in San Diego, built the bowsprit and masts for the Parsons' schooner.

"Leland is an unusual guy," Clark said. "He stuck it out and is about to reap the rewards."

Clark said homemade boats with concrete hulls were popular in the 1970s, but not many people have attempted a wooden boat the size of the Frank Edmund. Clark could recall only one man in Newport Beach who built a 100-foot wooden boat and another man in Chula Vista who built a cement boat about 30 feet long at his home.

The Parsonses' slow progress ultimately worked to their benefit. Like a mountain climber focusing on the next step rather than the far-away peak, Leland spent months on detailing woodwork, learning electronics, researching engines and making careful choices about material, not really thinking about how much time had passed or how much money had been spent.

"I think we'd probably choke if we figured it out," Cecily said about their investment. The couple figure they spent about $300,000 on the project. Their custom schooner recently was appraised at $2.6 million.

Not a bad return, especially for a backyard project, but the Parsonses won't be selling their boat any time soon. They plan to use it for a charter business that will sail guests to exotic locations around the world.

Planting a dream

Leland was born in a house within 50 yards of the docks at East Gloucester Harbor in Massachusetts, where about 2,000 gaff-rigged schooners like the Frank Edmund fished. A few years later, the family moved to West Gloucester.

"My earliest memories are of sitting on the dock, fishing with my father," he said. "My father, at this time, worked as a clam-digger out of Essex Bay, three miles from the house."

His father rowed to the clam flats and back each day. When Leland turned 5 he joined his father on the trips, giving him his first taste of seamanship.

At 11, Leland owned his first "sailboat": a Tom Sawyer-like 10-foot raft with a horse blanket for a mainsail.

"It had less than 4 inches of freeboard before its gunwales were awash," he said. " Many times we had to walk home, never dry."

Boats became Leland's livelihood at 17 when he took a job as an apprentice rigger and ships' carpenter at the Rocky Neck Shipyard, where he worked on many of the old schooners in the famous Gloucester fishing fleet.

Leland still remembers the day in 1957 when he saw the Brigantine Yankee come into port under full sail for repairs.

"That's what did it. I knew then that I was going to build a boat and sail around the world. "

Irving and Electa Johnson sailed around the world seven times on the Brigantine Yankee with teenage crews who signed on to learn seamanship. Their adventures became well-known through National Geographic articles and the couple's own books.