The keel

They can say what they want about the keel of aboat: that it is the backbone of the boat, that it is the only, or at least the oldest man built structure made to resist orthogonal forces, etc.
But truth appears clearly to me when I see it on the racks in Mast'Antonio's boatyard, ready to be refined, and it is a truth demoted from any poetic or technical rhetoric: it is a beam.
A simple big beam, made out of stone hard and stone heavy wood, on which the ribs, the stempost and the sternpost, now waiting in a corner of the cave, will be arranged.

It looks all too easy, and there must be a trick indeed, because Michele and his father are entangle for endless time in accurate measurings and drawind obscure (and esoteric?) signs along the "beam. Then they begin to cut and polish (with the adze!) the two ends, to make the "palella" joint ready, where prow and stern will be. It looks like they are making a proof, but no the contrary, the keel (the beam...) is ready. Now the wooden parts, beams and planks, will become a boat.