1958 saw the building and launch of the first Alan Payne-designed, Tasman Seabird design, 36-foot Maris for globetrotter and marine artist, Jack Earl, who wrote the foreword to this book. "Maris is now owned by round-the-world yachtsman, Ian Kiernan, of Sydney who says he'Il never sell her while he can use her. As far as I know she was the first of that design to be launched from a boatyard." She was built of Huon pine over hardwood ribs and backbone with a beam of nine feet. Jack Earl, his son Mick, daughter Maris and wife Kathleen, cruised thousands of miles, mainly in the Pacific. In fact, the Earl family lived on Maris for five years spending much time in and around Hawaii and San Francisco. Mick Earl also sailed her north as far as Vancouver Island while the family were based in San Francisco. Maris was particularly special for the Muirs because she was the first boat on which they had used splines: 'This is a method now used by several builders such as Bernard Wilson on the East coast, but it was unusual in 1958. Splines, or the method of joining planks on the hull, are used for their inherent strength." "This is because the hull becomes one solid skin instead of a series of planks on their edges. They are held together with glue." "The thing to remember about splining is that the wider planking cannot be used. The widest planks that can be used with splines would be between four or five inches compared to a conventionally planked boat of about six inches." Jock explains splining thus: "you take the two planks and cut a normal "V". Then, take the cut spline and run it through a small trough of glue and hammer it in with a club hammer and a lump of timber. what you really are doing is caulking with timber and glueing it under pressure. Of course, the fastenings have to be good on any boat that goes to sea. "What splining did was to do away with the cotton caulking and putty as a method of sealing the planks." "Actually, I was a bit apprehensive when we did our first splined boat, so in the case of Maris we caulked her in the normal way and then put in splines - just to make sure! "But from then on, every boat we built, including some ruggedly worked fishing vessels, except for Balandra, was done with splines."