BY WILLIAM WINSLOW (BLURB PUBLICATIONS ; 2010; 70 PAGES; $51.95).
REVIEW BY MICHAEL MAXFIELD
GATESVILLE, TEXAS
“You wake up to a beautiful sailing day with fleecy clouds scudding across a blue sky on gentle zephyrs of wind. Pack the lunch. Apply the sunblock. Let’s go sailing.” And so begins one of the 32 short essays in Catboat Tales.
Though not in chronological order, these little 1- to 2-page tales written by William Winslow are a collection chronicling the creation of the author’s backyard-built 18-foot catboat and sailing it around his home waters at the north end of Long Island, New York.
Each essay is a whole story in itself so the lack of order does not detract from the book, which covers a period of 13 years from the boat’s launch in 1995 to its sale in 2008. Many of the essays were previously published in the Catboat Association Bulletin.
For the most part, I found the stories to be enjoyable and lightly humorous, such as the alcohol stove that caught fire and had to be doused, then buried at sea or the overweight old gent whose attempts to climb back on board after a skinny-dipping excursion provided a sea of laughter for the other two crewmembers. These were usually combined with some sort of hard-earned and practical lesson, such as don’t put the fire extinguisher behind the stove and rigid ladders are better than rope ladders.
Though the reader can readily glean little tidbits about the specific sailing characteristics of catboats, this is not a book about sailing catboats. It’s about sailing in a backyard-built wooden sailboat that just happens to be a catboat.
At only 7 by 7 inches, this book is relatively small. It is also hardbound and too big to put into anything smaller than a large coat pocket or purse. Other than that, Catboat Tales might be great to carry around for those times when you have two or three minutes to spend while waiting for a child or spouse.
My only wish was for the book to be longer. It has large print and, with 32 photos and illustrations taking up page space, at only 70 pages, it is quite short. A fast reader could easily read the whole thing in less than 30 minutes. I did find a couple of the photos to be striking and, if enlarged, would probably make great wall prints.
