HUNTINGTON BEACH : He Navigated Around Doubts to Finish Job

For neighbors on Magellan Lane, the scene Friday morning was like a block party.

Residents gathered to watch the “launching” of the four-ton sailboat that Frank G. Waller built in his back yard. The vessel was lifted by crane to the street out front, and from there it will be transported to the Huntington Harbour area for its water launch next week.

“I think everyone is having a good time watching this,” Waller said. He made clear that he, too, was having fun. To complete the boat and sail it, he said, has been the dream of his retirement years.

“I say I have been working on this boat for five years, but my wife says it’s been for seven,” said Waller, who will be 72 in November.

A self-employed mechanical engineer, Waller began easing into retirement when he turned 65.

Part of his inspiration, Waller said, was the memory of his father retiring and suddenly having nothing to do. “So I said, ‘I’m going to build boats.’ I started designing this boat, . . . so it could travel on the Mississippi River. For a long time I have thought about having a boat going down the Mississippi River.”

Even with his engineering skills, Waller said, he occasionally had doubts about whether he could complete the ambitious project.

The boat’s name, he explained, says it all: Nooitgedacht, a Dutch word that translates “never thought.”

“I never thought I could do it,” said Waller, a native of the Netherlands who immigrated to the United States in 1956 and has lived in Huntington Beach since 1970.

Next on the agenda, Waller said, is that Mississippi River trip--”me for sure, but I don’t know about my wife.”