COEUR d'ALENE - The shell that became the project and the month-long sail to Hawaii popped up on eBay, although Don Lang was outbid.

But a funny thing happened.

The shell, an Alberg 30, with its reputed reputation for handling serious sea crossings, popped up on the online auctioning site again three months later.

Turns out, the winning bidder had a wife who told her husband to put that thing back on the market. Reputation be darned.

That was four years ago.

Lang, general manager of Expert Marine Technology, and his boss, Gary Dawes, flipped open two laptop computers and flooded the bid site, winning the right to buy the prize the second time around.

That was the beginning of the project.

"For me I've always just had this love for the ocean," said Lang, a sailor since he was 8 years old that includes five sails across the Pacific Ocean, from Vancouver Island in Canada, to Hawaii to Tahiti and across the French Polynesian Islands and beyond. "When kids were interested in cars, I was interested in diving, oceanography and boats."

That was growing up in British Columbia.

It was there, in 1994, Lang was recruited to help a man named Kevin Patterson navigate a 37-foot sailboat across the Pacific Ocean that Patterson had bought, but had never sailed.

Lang, with his expertise, was the recommended sailor in those circles.

"So I took a year off," Lang said of the offer, the account of which turned into Patterson's best-selling book, "The Water In Between," an adventure about the two men trading their troubles for the open sea.

But that was then.

This adventure started four years ago, with a losing eBay bid and then a winning one, a trip to Ohio to bring back the shell, and all the work to get back on the water.

This one includes Expert Marine Technology's lot boy, then 13-year-old Brice Franck.

The boy, 15 now, was in trouble for shoplifting at Sears. His job, set up by his stepfather as a way to keep him busy and out of trouble after school, was to clean up the parking lot.

One day, he saw Lang working on the boat.

"What are you doing?" he asked Lang.

"Building a boat to sail to Hawaii," Lang told him.

That spoke to Franck.

Every day after school after that, he showed up to help build it. It was where he learned the reward of hard work. The satisfaction of determination and goals.

"We'd talk about life, and what he wanted to get out of it," Lang said.

People stopped by to help, but there was always the two working, sanding, building, until the shell took shape; a 34-foot mast, kitchen, cabin and a GPS navigation system.

"Come on old man," Franck would holler to Lang to keep him motivated on slow days. "Let's get it done."

And on Thursday, Feb. 24, after a three-day drive to San Diego, Lang, his longtime sailing friend Jeff Ruddy and Franck sailed across the Pacific for the big island; a 26-day, 14-hour trip that took a two-day pounding from a gale with 18-22 foot waves, circled past the Great White Cafe where 47 chipped great whites coagulated, fished for mahi-mahi, past sea lions, whales, dolphins: 2,276 miles, 100 miles a day, at 4.3 miles per hour.

"You got all the time to think during the day," said Franck, a Lake City High School student. "Sunrise after sunrise, sunset after sunset."

Now, Franck wants to move to Hawaii after he graduates, and work. He wants to learn how to scuba dive.

"I'm in a different state of mind on everything," he said. It was his first sail. "I don't want to sit around and be a bum."

What calls a man to sail across the ocean? Lang can't say, it's just a calling. And his next adventure is too far down the line to say for sure.

Who knows, he said.

But the boat, "Kolohe," (meaning rascal in Hawaiian) is now docked in Hawaii, its permanent home, having started as an idea, two bids on eBay, a truck drive to Ohio, and a lot boy who took an interest.