sounds like the wise men of Chelm, who lived somewhere in eastern Europe.
going to sea in a sieve is in some poem in, IIRC, "Sing a Song of Popcorn," a wonderful great big anthology. But it's the Jumbilees, whose hands are blue and whose faces are green (or possibly vice versa) who sail away for a year and a day.


Chocolate Pi (solving the Schrodinger equations for multielectron atoms, o joyfulness)