From back yard to high seas

"San Diego Union Tribune" article,   January 30, 2005

By Booyeon Lee - STAFF WRITER

POWAY – The neighborhood children call him "Noah."

Leland Parsons' dream was to sail the world with his wife and his eight children in a boat he built with his own hands.

To say the project has taken a lot longer than Parsons expected is an understatement. His children are grown.

But 28 years after he began hauling truckloads of lumber into his back yard, Parsons' boat is finished and ready to sail.

The schooner Frank Edmund – 57 feet tall, 16 feet wide and 65 feet long – sits among the hills of southeast Poway in the back yard of Parsons' home on Garden Road. It will touch the water in April, when Parsons docks it at Mission Bay.

In September, Parsons, 64, and his wife, Cecily, 57, plan to set sail on a five-year journey around the world.

The sailboat is the product of Leland Parsons' lifelong love affair with sailing. Born and raised on the rivers of West Gloucester, Mass., Parsons decided he would build his own vessel as an 18-year-old apprentice rigger, who fixed up old schooners that docked at the Gloucester harbor.

"It's such a romantic old trade," he said.

When Parsons, a professional builder, began the schooner in 1977 from a design he commissioned from a Marine Corps captain, he expected to finish it in four years.

But life got in the way.

"There were camping trips and children's ballet performances to go to. We were remodeling the home. Too many things were happening in life," said Cecily Parsons, who home-schooled the four children they had together. Leland Parsons has four children from a previous marriage.

Sometimes a year would pass without Leland Parsons touching the boat. But what began as a father's dream eventually became a family pastime.

"Some families do puzzles. We had the boat," said Ben Parsons, 28, who was born about the time the first truckload of lumber arrived. "As far as I've been around, life has gone on with a boat in the back yard."

After 28 years, does he share his father's love of sailing?

"To me, it's work; it's a way of life. It's not romance," Ben Parsons said.

The sailboat looms over a row of homes behind the Parsons' 1-acre back yard. Curious boys have climbed the fence to volunteer their services toward the construction of what they call "Noah's Ark."

Over the years, Leland Parsons remembers one or two instances of neighbors complaining about the construction noise, so he altered his work schedule. But the neighborhood has generally been friendly and supportive, Parsons said.

"I don't know what we're going to do when it's gone. It's been a landmark here for so long," said Melanie Snowhite as she showed pages of photographs of the boat's construction.

Snowhite, who moved next door to the Parsons four years ago, has chronicled the project by taking photos every few months. A few of them are reminders of the harrowing hours in October 2003, when the schooner came close to being engulfed by the Cedar fire. The fire roared down a hill near Garden Road, stopping about 150 feet short of the boat.

The couple has invested about $300,000 for the boat's raw materials alone. Named after Cecily Parsons' father, the Frank Edmund is appraised at $3 million.

While squatting on the boat's deck recently, Cecily Parsons ran her hand along its smooth surface. "We laid out each plank, hammered each nail," she said.

The hull is made of seven layers of plywood and four layers of fiberglass; 18 portholes provide light to the interior. In the bow are two private cabins each with a bunk bed, and a bathroom with shower and toilet.

Leland and Cecily Parsons' aft stateroom features a queen-size bed, bathroom, sitting area and a storage room for a washer and dryer. Between the fore and aft accommodations is a 150-square-foot day cabin.

The schooner has eight sails with about 3,000 square feet of canvas in all, including a 560-square-foot mainsail and a 400-square-foot forward sail. All are hoisted by hand. Should the wind fail, a four-cylinder Ford Lehman diesel engine with a hydraulic-drive system is capable of a speed of 12 knots, Leland Parsons said.

The boat can carry 350 gallons of fresh water for bathing and cooking and has a desalination device that can turn up to 10 gallons of salt water into drinking water every four hours.

Most of the interior, from the red-tiled bathroom with a Jacuzzi tub to the full kitchen and dinette area to the rosewood, walnut and teak dining table built on gimbals so it stays level as the boat rocks, was designed for his wife's comfort, Leland Parsons said.

"It's beautiful and irresistible because I want her to go with me," he said.

The couple is counting the days to their sailing adventure. Cecily Parsons says she has begun packing for their five-year trip, and their home is ready to be rented.

Leland Parsons has the route already mapped. The Frank Edmund will sail along the Central American coast, through the Panama Canal, across the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi River and then head south to the Caribbean Sea. The couple plans to stop in Washington, D.C., Greenland, Iceland, England, then continue to Europe.

Bringing their children and 16 grandchildren together for the trip isn't possible. So the Parsons are planning to recruit groups of about six like-minded people for portions of their journey. They envision excursions of about five days per group, with each person paying about $250 a day for full use of the boat, including three meals a day, with the Parsons as skippers.

"We don't want young executives looking for a chance to party and get drunk," Leland Parsons said. "We're looking for families who have a passion for sailing, who are willing to heave-ho and scrub the deck. But Cecily and I'll do the journey with or without the time-share."

The couple has waited nearly three decades for their adventure of a lifetime. But Leland Parsons said the years shared with his family building the boat has more than satisfied his dream.

"Dreams aren't meant to be completed anyway," he said. "We might go out there and say, 'This is crazy, let's go home.' "

 

The Frank Edmund:

Size:
57 feet tall, 16 feet wide and 65 feet long
Weight:
26 tons
Hull:
Plywood and fiberglass
Sails:
Eight; 3,000 square feet of canvas
Engine:
Four-cylinder Ford Lehman diesel
Accommodations:
Two private cabins, one stateroom
Launch date:
April 2005