A Work of Ark : Hobby: Dale Hines, 80, has labored for 24 years to build a 50-foot sailboat in his back yard. It will hit the water for the first time this week.

A mighty boat has risen up from a Torrance back yard, a boat so wide and so heavy that naysayers doubted it would ever budge from its grassy mooring.

Dale Hines has slaved over this boat for 24 years, lovingly crafting its cement-and-metal hull, painting its sides, lining its cabin with gleaming mahogany. It is a back-yard hobby on a massive scale, a dream bigger than Hines ever anticipated when he started work back when he was a youthful 56 and Richard Nixon was President.

This week, defying the naysayers, the 50-foot, 32-ton craft is due to be lowered into the Pacific Ocean for the first time.

For Hines, 80, the boat-building has been a lesson in patience, and in obstinacy. Although the retired aerospace inspector has never built a boat before, he bought blueprints and followed the plan. When he couldn’t find a part, he fashioned it himself on his garage lathe. When the sailboat proved too bulky to squeeze out of his yard, he and a friend cut through the bushes, built a road and ferried the craft across a baseball field.

“There’s a whole lot of people eating crow right now,” said Ken Hyder, who grew up down the street from Hines and worked alongside him in recent months.

Neighbors have watched as the massive boat swelled until it could be seen above the one-story homes of Sleepy Hollow, a peaceful, tree-shaded glen in southern Torrance. They nicknamed Hines “Noah,” and his boat became “the Ark,” a familiar landmark, a curiosity. As the years passed, some lost faith that the boat maker would ever realize his dream.

Yet Hines persevered, day after day, chore after chore.

His vision is a simple one: He wants to climb aboard with his wife, Marie, and a few friends and sail west to Hawaii, then northeast to explore the San Juan Islands.

He is a soft-spoken man who uses words sparingly. Even as the launch nears, he remains intent on the remaining tasks, still too focused to relax and extol his triumph.

“We kind of like it,” he said of his boat, “but we want to get it floating.”

And even on the brink of victory, new turbulence arose. As the boat sat in dry dock 10 days ago, Hines discovered a bottom-paint problem that forced him to strip the mammoth hull right down to the concrete. The delay will cost several thousand dollars in paint and boatyard fees, overloading his meager budget. Then, a day later, his friend Hyder fell on an oily ramp and injured his back.

So Hines toiled alone during the Fourth of July weekend, stripping paint and worrying about finances.

What keeps him going, he said as he eyed his boat, is what lies ahead: the stress-free life aboard a sailboat. “It’s so nice and quiet,” he said.

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Friends attribute Hines’ perfectionism to the years he spent as a quality control inspector at aerospace companies, including TRW, where he inspected satellites.

An experienced sailor, he says he began his project in 1971 “because I’ve always wanted a boat, and I can’t afford to buy something like that.”

The only other boat he ever owned was the rowboat he built in high school in Traverse City, Mich. He got the notion of sailboat-building as a boy from a 1920s National Geographic article recounting how an Iowa farmer fashioned a boat and sailed it around the world.

He originally thought his project would take 10 or 12 years, but one thing led to another.

Among the first tasks was constructing a wood frame to be used for supporting the hull of wire mesh and steel rods. The 18-foot frame towered so high that a city inspector came by to ask to see Hines’ building permit. “It’s not a building,” Hines retorted. “It’s a boat.”

Friends lent a hand from time to time, like James Turner, a retired airline pilot down the street who helped Hines install a Navy surplus boat engine nearly a decade ago. But as each task got done, another loomed.

Then, as if on cue, Hyder returned to his old neighborhood one day last year and spotted new metal railings glinting on the familiar back-yard ark.

“I thought, something’s got to be going on,” said Hyder, 47, a boating aficionado and former Navy civilian electrician. He admired the handiwork, judging it one of the finest concrete boats he had ever seen. But it was only two-thirds done, he thought to himself, and the man nicknamed Noah was nearing 80.

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Soon he found himself working 10-hour days alongside Hines, and guiding him in purchasing radar and other navigational equipment.

“Little by little, you get sucked in,” Hyder said.

Curiously, Hines did not seem surprised at his co-worker’s arrival. “It was like, hey, that was in the game plan,” Hyder said. “Somewhere along the line, someone was going to show up and say, ‘I’ll work on the boat for free.’ ”

They make an odd pair: Hines, gray-haired and low-key, a white nautical hat shoved back on his head, while Hyder sports a ponytail and a proud exuberance about the impending launch.

Hines seems indefatigable. Friends describe him gripping a 70-pound battery in his arms and clambering up the rickety wooden stairs leading into his boat. The thought of not finishing, they say, never seemed to enter his mind.

In time, the boat was nearly seaworthy--even though it remained landlocked in a back yard more than a mile from the sea. The neighbors watched and wondered. There was talk of demolishing Hines’ garage to free the boat, of hiring a crane.

Finally, a transport company was located that was willing to move the boat to water. In the pre-dawn hours last month, Wilmington Boat Movers eased the huge hull via trailer onto the empty streets of Sleepy Hollow and then to King Harbor Marine Center in Redondo Beach, where it sits in dry dock.

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The launching will mark only the fourth time in a quarter-century that a concrete boat has been put in the water at the center, said owner Abe Tavera. Although popular 20 years ago, he said, such boats are now “kind of a lost generation.” Tavera believes the boat is seaworthy. “He looks like he built a pretty good boat.”

The rich, mahogany-lined interior, too, hints at an earlier era, and so does the yellow-painted kitchen. But the navigational system is state-of-the-art, boasts Hyder, who plans to accompany Hines and his wife to Hawaii.

Hines, who will christen the boat Kay Marie after his daughter, suspects that he spent $45,000 to $50,000 building it. “I’ve got a whole suitcase of receipts. I haven’t added them up yet. I don’t know if I will,” he said.

His subdued style lifts somewhat and he sounds almost ebullient when he describes his upcoming sail to Hawaii, his plan to explore the myriad islands in Puget Sound.

He doesn’t talk much about returning to Torrance.

“That’s why I started the boat,” he said. “To see something else.”