The three-year plan goes something like this: sell the boat; buy a seaplane for him in which they can fly across the U.S.; buy an excavator for her with which she can dig ponds.

But first there is the matter of the round-the-world cruise.

And before that there is the matter of attending to a million little details in what is quickly becoming a very small amount of time.

Before that there was the matter of building the boat that would take them around the world.

And before that there was the matter of building the barn in which they would build the boat that would take them around the world.

And before that there were regular jobs and messy divorces and boyfriends who didn't work out that well. And way before that there was a kid sitting on shore looking at sailboats and thinking he wanted to be on them.

So that's as good a place to start as any, on the shores of Fire Island. That's where Phil Shelton, then 16, now 45, gazed out at the sailboats and said, "That'll be me some day." From then on boats were never far from Shelton's life. For 50 cents an hour he would do whatever his grandfather, boatbuilder Stanley Grodeski, needed done at his yard on Long Island in New York.

In 1979 Shelton moved from Long Island to Maine's Washington County to build boats. In 1985 he moved on to the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, where he ran the Apprenticeshop. Later, working with multihull designer and builder Walter Greene of Yarmouth, he designed and built the giant globe in the lobby of the nearby Delorme headquarters.

Meanwhile, in a barn in Georgetown, the keel for Iwalani, a George Buehler-designed double-ended gaff cutter, had been laid in 1991, and that teen-ager's dream started to take shape.

Other things were being built as well, such as Shelton's relationship with Amy Wood, now his wife and active partner in the dream. Though a veterinarian for 15 years, Wood was no stranger to the sea. She had sailed aboard her 1960 fiberglass Rhodes sloop, and welcomed Shelton aboard to share cruises from the Isles of Shoals to Jonesport.

Not that this wooden boatbuilder was particularly gracious about it. "Phil had to lower himself to get into it because he hates fiberglass," Wood says. He also hates to see wood on a fiberglass boat, so off came all brightwork to be replaced with "brown tape."

Shelton introduced Wood to a new kind of sailing, practicing night passages and watch standing and eschewing the sort of cruising life that Wood now says is "like camping out." She was delighted by the change. "I've absolutely fallen in love with it," she says. "I never knew how much life there was at 4 o'clock in the morning."

Don't get them wrong – they know full well that the Gulf of Maine is not the Atlantic Ocean, or the Pacific Ocean, or the Southern Ocean, but Shelton is confident that when they set off on July 1 for North Haven, where they will visit family and await the forecaster's all-clear, they will be ready.

He knows the boat is up to the task, because he built every inch of himself. He knows the intricate plumbing systems because he installed them, watermaker and all; likewise, the electrical system with its high-output alternator and wind charger and inverter so they can tap into 110 volts in the middle of the ocean and make ice cream; he knows the Westerbeke diesel and, if only the supplier would return it to him, he knows the special fuel filtering system he ordered.

Best of all, he knows every inch of that 50-foot hull with its 13.5-foot beam and 7-foot draft and 40,000 pounds of displacement, including the concrete and railroad ties that are her ballast. And, he reassures Wood, he knows that 2-inch-thick wood hull and is confident that it would win a fight with her worst fear – a collision with a tractor-trailer-sized container hanging just under the surface. And if that hull should somehow get pierced, he's confident the five bilge pumps can keep the boat afloat long enough for him to fix it.

But the fact that he knows the boat so well also concerns Wood. She doesn't like having all that knowledge tied up in a body that could be brought down with an appendicitis or a knock on the head, leaving her alone with Iwalani and all that complexity. She wishes she had done more, felt more familiar with the boat, but says the woodworking and technical stuff simply aren't in her nature.

She describes the process of fitting out Iwalani as a battle between form and function. "I'm form, he's function. And looking around the boat, function won."

But not everywhere. There are the flowers that Amy, an artist, has painted on the bunks, hoping they will brighten dreary days at sea. And there are the crimson cockpit cushions that she made after teaching herself to sew.

At sea, the couple expects that responsibilities will be more evenly divided. Cruising on her Rhodes, they alternate days as captain. On passages that won't be necessary because whoever is standing watch will be captain for the moment. Still, they both know they need to be diligent about the division of responsibilities.

"It's too easy for the man to become captain and the woman to become the galley slave," Wood says.

They won't be completely alone at sea. For the first leg of the trip – the crossing from North Haven to the Azores – Shelton's teen-age sons, Ben and, Nathaniel, will be joining them. And Stewart the cat and Larry the canary have also signed on, though Wood has decided the ship is no place for her little dachshund, who will stay at home.

Meanwhile, as they finish fitting out Iwalani at the Robinhood Marine Center docks, endless days are punctuated by endless visits from the curious. Wood says reactions to the trip fall into two categories: "Oh, you're one of thoseÉ" or "It must be niceÉ"

It's the second reaction that really gets her, helping her to put aside her worst fears. "Anyone can do this if they really want to," she says.

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