Back when I was an engineering student, the powers-that-be at the school had decided that we would all take a shop class. This was a metal shop. We were exposed to and actually did everything from casting to machining to welding. The instructor in the shop was also a sailor, and I spent many fine weekends crewing for him. His boat was a 37' yawl that started life as a 30' cat boat - he swore there was some original wood down in the keel somewhere. Needing winches, he made his own patterns, then cast and machined his bottom handle winches. At one point he decided to get into racing, and got a spinnaker from Bacon. I arrived at his yacht club the morning of the inaugural race to find that he had contrived a wood lathe from an electric motor and a railroad tie in the parking lot - he was turning down a spinnaker pole to fit some end fittings that he 'found'. We headed out with the new pole and a 'How to Sail' book that described flying a spinnaker. (No one on board had flown a chute before) We went by the book, flew the chute, had fun, and ended up adding a mizzen staysail to the rig. By the end of the season, we'd even collected a 'first in class' trophy, beating (most memorably) Jacob Isbrandtsen in 'Hother' (a big double ender). Knowing Gus was a great experience for a young engineer and a young sailor.