Steel on Dry Grass

The Lawn Ship of Mineral Wells

Eli: Most front yards in Mineral Wells, Texas, hold a lawn and maybe a truck. Dale's, Hooray News reports, holds a 62-foot steel boat. Dale is 86. He's been building it by hand since 1987, hours from the nearest ocean. And this October, it's still sitting on dry ground.

Mara: The listener's question is a simple one. Why has an 86-year-old spent almost 40 years building a 62-foot boat in his yard? It's Monday, October 26th, and today's angle is the landlocked mariner.

Eli: We'll start on that lawn. Then the hill between the boat and the road, then what changed this fall. Whether a boat built here can ever reach the water it was meant for is still open.

Mara: Hours from any coast?

Eli: And it was always meant for open water. Good News Network reports Dale started with a clear goal: finish the boat and sail it to Alaska.

Mara: And it's built to live aboard. Times Now World describes a planned interior with four staterooms, a master bedroom, a lounge, a kitchen and an engine room.

Eli: So, Mara, that's the picture.

The Hill and the Decades

Mara: Here's what getting that far took. One man, by hand, in his own yard, for decades. The boat is estimated to be about 75 percent complete. Three quarters of a ship. But Ava Wang and Karl Markvart say that at his age, he can no longer keep building it on his own.

Eli: So the last quarter needs hands that aren't his.

Mara: And even a finished boat would hit a second wall: getting out of the yard. The sheer scale of the steel structure has reportedly made moving it a mounting hurdle. Moving it from the yard to a launch site takes heavy machinery. The estimate to move it and get it on the water is roughly $50,000.

Eli: No amount of welding gets a ship that size up a hill.

Mara: It isn't a building problem anymore. It's machines, money and a route, all at once.

Eli: And he's not the first backyard builder to spend that long. In 2014, the Los Angeles Times profiled a retired heavy-duty mechanic in Sun Valley, miles from the ocean, with a 64-foot boat in his backyard, a couple of feet longer than Dale's. He'd started in 1977, and he told ABC News how: 'I called a ship builder and told him I wanted to sail the Atlantic, and he drew a sketch for me and I began to build.' By 2014, it was nearly finished.

Mara: So a span like that isn't unheard of. What Dale has right now is three quarters of a ship and no way over that hill.

The Strangers at the Gate

Eli: Then the outside world found the boat. Three travelers from England, Laurence Benson and two friends, heard about it from a friend who'd spotted it while working in the area. Benson tells what came next: 'We tried calling, but couldn't get through. So we drove an hour and a half from Fort Worth and turned up unannounced.'

Mara: At an 86-year-old's yard.

Eli: And Dale met them. Then, reports say, he climbed a ladder to show them the deck. Something he hadn't attempted in years. Benson wrote that the moment Dale started talking about the boat, it showed. 'He's as passionate now as he was 40 years ago,' Benson wrote.

Mara: Above four staterooms, private sleeping cabins.

Eli: They filmed the visit. Benson posted it on Instagram, and overnight it drew around 670,000 likes and thousands of comments. A man who'd worked on that hull alone in Mineral Wells for decades suddenly had an audience.

Mara: And the watching turned into money. Benson, a content creator, launched a GoFundMe with his friends. That's a crowdfunding campaign: lots of people each giving a little online, pooled toward one big bill. This one was meant to cover finishing work and moving the boat to a launch site, with the organizers confirming the plan and the costs with Dale's family.

Eli: One account says Dale had nearly given up on the goal before they stepped in.

Mara: The money came fast. The latest tally on the page was about $44,700, toward the heavy machinery reported needed to move the boat from the yard to a launch site.

Eli: Within reach of the $50,000 that hill was going to cost.

Mara: Then donations were paused. The organizers say they'll work closely with Dale's family to get the ship, in their words, 'off the dry grass and into water where it belongs.'

Eli: So the man on the lawn, who built alone for decades, isn't alone anymore. His family, three travelers and some sixteen hundred donors are in it now. What isn't known yet is whether the hull itself is ready for water. Money can pay for the trip, Mara, but the boat still has to float when it gets there.

The Unfinished Horizon

Mara: Back to that lawn in Mineral Wells, with all of that in view. Benson put Dale's hope in one line: 'His dream is to see her on the water.' One report calls the whole project a labor of love. The same report says it has highlighted perseverance and dedication.

Eli: Dale and Benson's reading: always a serious push to finish it and sail it.

Mara: Eli, there's another reading. Ava Wang and Karl Markvart see the daily routine, the craftsmanship and the persistence as having become a lifelong ritual, an end in themselves. Either way, one thing is unsettled. Hooray News says no machinery or moving work had been reported, and the boat's condition and seaworthiness hadn't been verified. Seaworthiness is the hull being fit to take the sea, shown to hold up against water and weather.

Eli: So three-quarters built says nothing yet about whether it floats safely.

Mara: And finishing it wouldn't settle that either. Fit has to be shown, by someone checking the hull, before it goes anywhere near water.

Eli: And the man who built it still climbed that ladder for strangers.

Mara: Dale spent nearly forty years on this boat because sailing to Alaska was the goal he set in 1987, and the work became a labor of love that outlasted his ability to finish it or launch it alone. Today it sits where it was built, on the grass in Mineral Wells, hours from the ocean, three quarters done, with his family and a crowd of strangers now carrying the last stretch.

Eli: Three things to watch. Whether certified marine surveyors or the U.S. Coast Guard inspect the welds before the boat moves. Whether a transport contract gets announced, with a route and a body of water at the end of it. And whether follow-up reporting gives Dale's full name and his professional background.

Mara: Read up on staterooms.

Eli: And follow culture with us.

Mara: That's where we'll leave it. I'm Mara.

Eli: And I'm Eli. Thanks for listening. Until next time on Angle.