It started innocently enough.

Sixty years ago, a 16-year-old Don Winslow and his friend Keith Williams were trying out the boat he built in his wood shop class at South Kitsap High School when a wave doused them and the boat’s engine, stranding them near Blake Island.

Cold and wet, Winslow said the teens dragged the boat ashore and went looking for somewhere to warm up.

They stumbled upon the Trimble Mansion, which had long since been abandoned by its owner, Seattle millionaire William Trimble, after the stock market crash in 1929 and the tragic death of his wife, according to the Yukon Harbor Historical Society.

“There were no more doors, it was pretty dilapidated,” said Winslow, now a 76-year-old retiree living in Port Orchard, explaining that the two teens went inside and started a fire in one of the house’s five fireplaces.

Once warm, the teens headed back to South Kitsap, using pieces of wood as oars since the boat’s engine still would not start. When they reached South Colby, the boys looked back and saw smoke billowing off the island.

Not sure it was their fault but worried it was, Winslow said neither boy told anyone about what they did, even as newspaper stories the next day surmised the fire was arson, and different rumors circulated for decades about why the house burned down.

But Winslow must have told his younger sister at some point, because 60 years later Alice Manley, now 71, walked up to Russell Neyman at the Manchester Family Inn and told him about her brother burning down a house on Blake Island.

“So (Neyman) called me and I told him the story, and I thought that would be the end of it,” Winslow said.

But it wasn’t, since soon he was contacted by a reporter from The Seattle Times, which ran a story this week about the 60-year-old mystery finally being solved.

“I wish it hadn’t come out,” Winslow said Wednesday, explaining that he was very surprised the story garnered so much attention and that his sister has since apologized to him for leaking it.

Asked if he had been haunted by guilt about the incident all these years, Winslow said no.

“We were just kids out fishing who built a fire to get warm,” he said, explaining that he still wasn’t completely certain they were responsible, and if they had seen the fire start all those years ago, “we absolutely would have tried to put it out.”

Winslow went on to run a gas station on Mile Hill Drive — now the site of the Washington Mutual branch in South Park Village — for 25 years before selling it in 1993.

Williams, he said, died several years ago.

As for Neyman, he said didn’t contact the Seattle Times about the story, but assumes the reporter learned about it from his Web site, which he said “got all sorts of hits” after he posted “Trimble Fire Solved” on July 19.

“I’m surprised at how much attention this has gotten,” he said, adding that he guessed the revelation would be interesting to “us local ‘history buffs,’ but I didn’t think it would cause such a stir.”

Already in contact with many interested in the history of the former town of Colby, Neyman said he now gets asked to solve even more local mysteries, such as by one man who claimed the military had dumped surplus trucks and bulldozers into Puget Sound.