When Dr. Bill Neal first began dreaming of building a customized rowing and sailing vessel, he didn’t know exactly how all-consuming the undertaking would be.

Over a four-month span from May through August, the orthopedic surgeon singlehandedly designed and hand-built a combination rowboat and sailboat to use in the Shipyard School Raid, a unique seven-day boat race held in the waters off Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Together with his wife, Mary, Neal rowed and sailed their way to a third-place finish in the event, earning the admiration of seven teams of professional boat builders and the satisfaction of completing a demanding project.

“It was a culmination of a lifelong interest to design a boat, build it and go off and do this exotic race,” Neal said. The lifelong boat aficionado was attracted by the challenge of designing and building a vessel that could sail fast but also be rowed in ocean conditions.

“The thrill in it for me is that solutions to that problem involve not just a lot of new materials, but a lot of tried-and-true solutions that have been used in vessels over hundreds of years.”

Neal learned of the Canadian race two years ago after reading an article in Wooden Boat magazine about similar events held in France and Scotland. The Neals entered the 2006 Shipyard School Raid in a 25-foot fiberglass Dovekie that Bill modified for more efficient rowing. With little wind during the event, the Neals were stuck taking turns rowing a total of 95 miles of the 105-mile total distance during the weeklong race, giving Bill plenty of time to dream up more efficient designs. When they finished as one of the slowest boats in the race, Mary declared she wouldn’t return unless the couple had a faster boat.

With single-minded focus, Neal went to work over the winter, spending nearly seven months researching and designing the vessel, using a computer program to work out his ideas and eventually making paper models of the design. Eventually he settled on a traditional “lug” rig featuring a pair of identical sails, two sliding seats for rowing and composite oars. On May 1, he pulled his car out of the family garage and began building, dedicating practically every free moment to the project.

‘He was like a madman,” said Mary Neal. “Part of that was wanting to complete it, but the other was knowing that if he didn’t complete it, I wasn’t going to do the race.”

Using a hand saw and planes for 90 percent of the work, Bill Neal laboriously constructed the 20-foot “Neal Raid 20” in the mornings and evenings before and after work. The boat was built upside down on a frame called a “strongback” and composed of Alaska Sitkan Spruce, which was also used for the boom and the mast. Neal set up the bulkheads by himself, coated the hull with epoxy and after flipping the boat right side up, finished the interior.

Every piece of the project was handled entirely by Neal, with a handful of exceptions. Donna Smithers sewed the custom tent Neal designed to use for shelter while the couple lived on the boat during the race and Joe Bauer welded plates to reinforce the oar locks. Dave Pfeifer assisted with painting the vessel Bill named “Dragonfly”.

“The hardest part of construction was the enormity of it,” Bill said. “My internship was the only project I can think of that took that much time and focus. It was an exercise in focus.”

With the Dragonfly’s paint still wet, the Neals rolled the boat out of the garage on August 30 and towed it to Vancouver, where the Shipyard School Raid began. Once again, winds were light for the race and the Neals wound up rowing an average of five hours each day, in part because their daggerboard (a narrow board placed through a slot in the hull used to reduce sideways drifting) broke on the second day of racing. Rowing was a more tolerable task than the previous year because they were able to row together, but it still provided an incredible endurance test, Mary said.

“Rowing six hours a day is brutal – your hands are destroyed,” Mary said. “It’s red-lining it for three hours, taking a break then red-lining it for another three hours.”

Out of the 11 legs of the the race, the Neals won one leg, finished second in four legs and were third in four legs. The pair slept on the boat each night and would board a support vessel for breakfast and dinner during the race. Navigational decisions on each leg were the responsibility of the competitors.

“Most of the time we were rowing as hard as we could, but once in a while the wind would come in the right direction,” Bill Neal said. “It was wonderful to go from total energy output to sailing, which is beauty and ease combined. The boat exceeded my expectations for rowing speed and sailed beautifully, which was really gratifying.

Even as Neal is still reveling in his accomplishment, he’s contemplating a return to the event next year, and may even make additional modifications to the Dragonfly.

“It’s been an adventure of a lifetime for me,” Bill said.