His magnum opus inspires anew
Issue 65 : Mar/Apr 2009
Jerry and I were in awe of Don Casey in 1997 when we started our new magazine named with a nod of appreciation to Don’s popular book, This Old Boat. We didn’t know Don personally yet, but once we’d chosen the name for our magazine, we quickly made email contact with him looking for permission to do a spinoff on the well-known title, first published in 1991. From then on, Don has been extremely supportive of the whole concept of our “sailing magazine for the rest of us.”
Since we’d never published a sailing book nor sailed around the world, we asked Don to lend credibility to our effort by writing a guest editorial. That he did beautifully with his piece “Ode to Joy: In Praise of Good Old Boats” in our premier issue, June 1998. Read it sometime. It’s passionate and compelling. If you don’t already have a good old boat, you may run out and buy one.
In the fall of 2002, Jerry and I met Don and Olga Casey and wrote a profile about them and Richard Cory, their 30-foot Allied Seawind, in our January 2003 issue. During the interview, Don said he began writing This Old Boat because he figured someone should write a book that incorporates all the maintenance information sailors need. That book launched Don’s career as the do-it-yourselfer’s guru and one of sailing’s most prominent authors. Since then, Don has written other books and thousands of articles but none can hold a candle to this classic. It has sold more than 50,000 copies since 1991. It is one of the most successful titles ever published by International Marine.
Don and his publishers agreed to revise the book in 2005. Don points out that this project was a mammoth one: “The new edition took a little more than twice as long to write as the original . . . my best estimate is that about 70 percent of the old content has been completely rewritten . . . notable changes are a lot of new material on diesel engines, including guidance on repowering, a much more comprehensive look at electrics, and an entirely new refrigeration chapter. Also new . . . mast refinishing, LPG plumbing, graphics application, lifeline replacement . . .” This second edition will be available in bookstores in April.
The sailing community is amazingly close-knit. Contributing editor Paul Ring writes fondly about his former boat, a Cheoy Lee Offshore 27, Magnolia. Watch for this piece in our May 2009 issue. As Paul will tell you with great pride, Magnolia just happens to be the boat that has graced, and will continue to grace, the cover of This Old Boat. Furthermore, Good Old Boat artist Fritz Seegers updated the illustrations in the second edition. They are outstanding and a terrific addition to an already fine book.
If we ever have any doubt about the popularity of Don’s book, we need only go to our subscriber checks. Nearly every time we make a deposit of a fistful of checks for $39.95, one of those checks will be made out, not to Good Old Boat, but rather to This Old Boat. The bank takes them just the same, but we are humbled by the name recognition of the book that launched Don Casey’s career and grateful to Don for having a hand in the launch of our own adventure.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
