Laird Funk can hardly wait to feel the ocean breeze and the salt spray in his face when he launches his boat.

When finished, the 16-foot double-ended craft should do well on the Southern Oregon surf, he figures.

"You'll be able to either sail or row this boat," the Williams resident says. "It's designed to go into the ocean. A moderate surf on a good fall day out of Brookings would be ideal."

But first there is the little matter of "harvesting" what he has dubbed the Grow Boat.

The live boat rooted near his garden comprises 38 growing Oregon ash trees planted four years ago that have been trained to form the ribs and keel of a boat. The two keel trees have been grafted to the 36 rib trees.

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"It really is going into the water," he says, then adds, "No one has ever done this before — ever."

The idea was first floated some five years ago when Funk and longtime friend Richard Reames, a well-known Southern Oregon "arborsculptor" who uses trees to grow everything from gazebos to living sets of tables and chairs, were talking about the difficulty of finding the right pieces of wood for homemade boats. Reames is currently on a book tour in Australia for his new book, "Arborsculpture: Solutions for a Small Planet" Arborsmith Studios, 2005, 214 pages, $20.

"One of the things you can always use in boats are pieces of trees that grew into the right shape," Funk explains. "You find people out in the woods looking for various crotches and knee joints.

"So Richard and I were sitting around one day and started talking about how someone could plant a whole orchard of trees bent in a certain way for boats," he adds. "That's when Richard says, 'Or you could just grow the whole boat.'"

The boat-growing idea took root. Inspired by Reames, who provided most of the ash trees, Funk, who along with his wife, Lynn, is a former nursery owner, planted his boat trees.

The boat will complete its fifth summer of growth this year, then be harvested this fall, said Funk, who has written an article about the project for the April/May edition of the Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors magazine.

"I've been giving it a slow-release fertilizer and deep watering in the summer," he says. "These ash trees really like their water."

No pun intended.

"Ash is good compromise wood," he says. "The goal was to get this boat grown within our lifetime."

"We could have used poplar and done it within a couple of years. But that's real soft, weak wood. And we could have used oak but then I would have to hand the boat off to my grandkids," adds the 60-year-old Funk, who is also restoring a 1959 Thompson Sea Coaster made of oak, Oregon fir, mahogany and marine plywood.

Ash grows fast at the outset, is easily bent to form and is strong, he says.

Funk used wires attached to metal fence posts to guide the rib trees, then framed them with molding strips. He studied a boat-building book for the Grow Boat design.

It wasn't all smooth sailing, however.

"This rib tree here got some sun scald on the top of the bark two summers ago," he says. "So it's got a dead strip of bark. If it wasn't for the keel tree grafted to it, it would be dead by now."

Grafting the rib trees to the keel trees created a natural bond.

"We pulled them apart far enough to scrape them down to the cambium layer, fit them tightly back together and bound them up," he says.

But several of the ribs are lagging behind the others. All the saplings were 30 to 36 inches tall when planted.

"We should have put the taller ones here in the middle of the boat because there is so much horizontal run in the middle," he says of the hull.

He plans to replace the ones that don't measure up with other spare ash trees growing separately to be used for rails along the gunwale.

"We'll cut the ones out that are substandard, steam the other branches into shape, stick them into place, tack them in then Epoxy them into place," he says.

When completely grown and finished, the boat will weigh about 120 pounds, he estimates. The internal keel will be some two inches in diameter but there will also be an exterior keel.

The ribs, which will be slightly larger than an inch in diameter when harvested, will be covered with either two separate layers of cedar veneer or quarter-inch African mahogany marine plywood and a layer of fiberglass, Funk says.

"Once you get the glass on, it will be kind of a monocoque structure — one piece," he says, then adds, "At least until we slam up against a rock over at the coast."

Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at pfattig@mailtribune.com.