Boat launch caps 29 years of work for Poway couple

By: GARY WARTH - Staff Writer

Last modified Saturday, April 23, 2005 8:28 PM PDT

Cecily and Leland Parsons share a laugh while plotting their first trip in their boat.
John Raifsnider/For The NCT

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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.

"It was love at first sight," Cecily said.

But Leland's dream would have to wait, as his life took a series of unexpected turns. By 1968, he was getting his second divorce, and he had given in to a wanderlust that was calling him to Alaska to work on the oil pipeline. Somewhere along the way, he realized he had had enough of cold climates. He recalled hearing about a city named Oceanside, which he thought was a pretty name. He moved onto a 20-foot sailboat in Oceanside Harbor and took a job as a contractor's assistant.

Leland met Cecily while building an art studio in her mother's University City home. Her father, a brigadier general in the U.S. Marine Corps, didn't know what to make of the shaggy Leland at first, but warmed up to him because of his woodworking skills.

The Parsonses married in 1970, and Cecily knew that along with her groom came his boat-building dream. By 1970, he already had a model of the boat he envisioned, an Essex schooner like the kind he remembered from Gloucester. He spent the next several years looking for a designer.

Building starts

The couple moved to a home off Garden Road in Poway because one of their daughters, Amy, had a horse. In 1976, the year his son Ben was born, Leland began building two hulls on his property, one for himself and one for Michael and Norma Oliver, who provided lumber in exchange for Leland's labor. The two hulls were finished in 18 months. The Olivers hauled theirs away, leaving the other for Leland to work on, often with the help of eight children or two neighborhood boys.

"Every night, they'd knock on the door and say, 'What are you doing tonight, Mr. Parsons? Are you going to work on the boat?'" Leland said.

Sometimes the boys were sent home disappointed.

"It was kind of like a bell curve," Leland said. "One day, you'd find yourself working on it, then six months later you'd find yourself not working on it. Sometimes I wouldn't touch it for a year. You'd remodel the house, take vacations."

"It was always nagging at him, but you have to live your life as well," Cecily said.

After 10 years of work, the boat indeed looked like a boat. Leland was working as a developer, business was good, and he was satisfied with having built most of the schooner himself.

In 1988, the boat was hauled out of his yard ---- taking a brief detour to participate in that year's Poway Days parade as a float ---- and brought to a boat yard to be finished.

Things didn't go as planned. Leland's partner's company went bankrupt, and the couple had to bring the boat home. Each trip cost $2,000, and about $5,000 in equipment was stolen off the boat while it was in the shipyard.

Day by day

With the boat back home, Leland turned one of the cabins into a woodshop and returned to building it himself. With skills he said he inherited from his father, who also made church organs, Leland designed an interior with a harmony of natural colors. Deck beams are made of oak and teak. Sitka spruce and teak line other parts of the interior. A gimbaled dining table is a rainbow of walnut, maple, rosewood and teak.

Leland wired the boat for electronics and installed a 75-horsepower engine, a generator, gas fireplace and a galley with a gas-burning stove.

The little neighborhood helpers grew into men who used the skills they learned in Leland's yard to find construction jobs, and they continued to help on the boat.

Ready to sail

And now it is ready. Next week, the 72-foot mast and cabin house will be taken off the boat, and on Friday it will be moved from his back yard to Garden Road, where the Parsonses and some helpers will load 5 1/2 tons of lead ballast into the hull in preparation for its move to Mission Bay on May 2.

The boat will be launched in Mission Bay on May 2, Leland said, and after some test trials he will start a chartering operation that will begin with a trip to Panama.

Eventually, Leland hopes the dream that was planted when he was a child on the East Coast will come full circle when he sails the Frank Edmund up the river he floated on with his first boat.

"The most exciting thing is to sail it right up to my backyard back home, to sail right up behind the old homestead," he said. "My brother (Donny) lives there now. It's about six miles inland, and we're going to sail in on high tide."

For information on Leland Parsons' chartering venture, visit www.SchoonerVoyage.com.

• May 1976: Partnership with Michael and Norma Oliver. The Olivers provided the materials and the Parsonses the labor for two hulls.
• December 1977: First truckload of lumber arrived. Construction of upside-down hulls begins.
• June 1977: Hulls covered with fiberglass
• December 1977: Hulls turned upright
• May 2004: Deck completed
• September 2004: Boat painting complete
• October 2004: Masts raised for the first time
• December 2004: Steel shoe attached to keel
• January 2005: Sails raised for the first time
• May 2, 2005: Launch.