The ELISSA is an 1877 iron square-rigged sailing ship that was saved from a scrapyard in Piraeus, Greece, and brought back to Galveston, Texas, in 1982, to be restored as a floating museum. It still sails today. While the ship was in Greece, Eli came to the shipyard to design a replacement bow, as the original one was discarded a long time ago. For the new bow, he created a full-size wooden template that the shipyard workers used to bend, cut, and weld the replacement bow in place.

Eight months later, he was hired to design and carve a wooden figurehead and trailboards. He did charcoal and pencil sketches from life drawing and made a one-third scale clay model of the figurehead. It took another four months to carve the  mahogany figurehead and two pairs of mahogany trail boards.