Customer Reviews

The Year of the Boat: Beauty, Imperfection, and the Art of Doing It Yourself

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Not a how-to manual, but a description of how he found himself building a small wooden sailboat as a first time boatbuilder, punctuated with philosophical musings and stories of learning to sail and other related experiences. I identified completely with the author in that I followed the same path of dreaming about the Haven 12 1/2, wondering about Sam Devlin's Nancy's China, and then getting realistic and choosing Devlin's Zephyr. The book is a well-written, personal memoir and should be read by anyone whose ever toyed with the idea of building a wooden boat.

Well written book about: building a wooden boat, sailboats in general, and dealing with issues of being "perfect." Read it soon, and enjoy the real-life adventure the author encounters.

I've enjoyed several of Lawrence Cheek's books, particularly the third edition of Compass American Guides: Santa Fe, 3rd Edition, where his humor and quirky approach to sightseeing perfectly fit a rather quirky city. (Compass American Guides: Santa Fe, 5th Edition edited by Andrew Collins is a seamless update.)

It was with some anticipation that I bought and read this chronicle of a year in Cheek's life. A short extract will give you a flavor of the strong pluses and minuses of this book:

"Today I'm wondering about the chain of events that has braided my recent adult life with a boat, and whether I may have just wasted a precious year. I'm building a boat--a modest wooden sailing dinghy that fits, barely, in my suburban Seattle garage--and I'm in trouble. I just discovered, thanks to the scrutiny of a boatbuilding friend in another suburb, that four months ago I left out a piece of its structure. A sprinkling of minor mistakes, scattered across the course of a year, appear to have mated and multiplied into swarms. Neighbors continually drop in and practically swoon over the boat's graceful lines, but all I see is mistakes and misjudgments, some cosmetic, some possibly fatal to its safe functioning. I'm depressed and discouraged. I don't know whether I'll have a respectable and usable sailboat when I finish it, or a learning experience that's too deeply flawed even to give away.

"My work has been incomprehensibly slow, stumbling, often incompetent, plagued by doubt and at the same time infected by too much pride to ask for help. I started out knowing I was fully unqualified to build a boat, but buoyed by the belief that every first-time boatbuilder is unqualified, by definition. Building a doghouse or a gazebo doesn't begin to prepare you for the complexities of a boat, nor for the emotional surf you're headed into."

I share many of Cheek's doubts about undertaking any craft project, having grown up on a hard scrabble farm and all but failing shop in high school. Nonetheless, I have sucessfully learned to replace broken window glass (six hours including two trips to the hardware store), side houses, frame sheds, rewire basements, run pipe for a fish pond, re-model two different kitchens and, in many ways the most interesting and rewarding, re-condition an old wooden bucket.

In that case, I bought an old wooden bucket for $.25 at a garage sale, purchased How to Make a Coopered Wooden Bucket, and as described in my review of that fine book, was able to turn my treasure into a bucket worth at least $1.00 at our next garage sale.

I empathized with some of Cheek's angst, but with the detailed and delightful guidance of James D. Gaster, I was able to enjoy the experience immensely. As I read this book, from time to time I wished Cheek would just get on with it.

At the end of the day, though, I found this a very useful insight into how a craft challenged person -- at least this one -- approaches a new project. Strengths and weaknesses -- the book earns four stars from this butter fingers.

Robert C. Ross 2009

Great Book ! The author does a great job describing the emotional roller coaster ride while restoring a wooden boat. Good mix of humor. Easy read, will make you smile if you've done it.

I also recommend "Restore your Wooden Boat by those who've done it" particularly Chapter 3.

THE YEAR OF THE BOAT: BEAUTY, IMPERFECTION, AND THE ART OF DOING IT YOURSELF provides an outstanding memoir of building a wooden sailboat. The author opted to build a 13 1/2-foot sailing dinghy of classic lines - only to find out later tat it was too difficult to build from scratch. His journey into DIY ship-building makes for a fascinating, involving read perfect for nautical and general-interest collections alike.

My husband recently built a 12 foot row boat. It is actually very lovely and he did a great job on it. After reading some of the reviews, I thought he could relate to and appreciate the experiences written in this book. Wow, was I correct...he loves this book! After he read the last page, he said, "I'm going to start all over and read it again...now".

I thought perhaps the book would be better titled: "This is My Neurotic World and Welcome to It." To be sure, there are inspiring passages here and there, mostly in his recounting the thoughts of others on building boats, and sailing itself. But at the end of the day, it seemed what Mr. Cheek really wanted to say, was that even a somewhat klutzy, neurotic middle aged suburban worrier, can build a boat. It could have been titled, "Boat Building for THIS Dummy." As well, there are moments of complete hilarity, as when he takes his finished boat out to Mr. Devlin, a legend in the boat world, and designer of Cheek's homebuilt Zephyr, and finds out that... - well I don't want to spoil it for you. But it was perhaps the best moment in the entire book. I just put my head back and laughed. Still, back to my original premise, which was, that the book felt more like a visit to the mind of a neurotic man, than anything else it attempted. In some ways, I felt it almmost taints the magic that can be found on the road of boat building, although he surely tries to relate that magic to the reader. Also: Mr. Cheek's writing style itself, although grammatically correct and proper, seems as tortured, taken as a whole, as his boat building efforts. The grace and art that one feels after reading certain books - take Daniel Robb's "Sloop" for instance - is, I afraid to say, missing in Mr. Cheek's writing. I'm not sure why. What makes one person's art more fluid and remarkable and signatory, than another's? You can't put that into words, really. Writing is an art, like painting. And not to be disrespectful, but given Mr. Cheek's profession as a writer, I do believe, just as he finished and refinished "Far from Perfect"'s deck several times, after the boat was finished, that his writing itself, can be raised a notch. I do believe he can write better, whatever the topic may be.

Read this book if you are not planning to build a boat or read this book if you are planning to build a boat. In either case you will learn something about yourself as the author learns about himself in the process and cracks open a window into his soul.

I got this book because I was planning to build a boat. Instead I began building, maybe rebuilding a little bit of me. It was a joy to read.

If you are not planning to build a boat you will learn something about yourself and get to thinking about why you do some of the things you do. What motivates you to start something and maybe what motivates you to not.

If you are planning to build a boat, this should be required reading as your first assignment. It will help you sort out some important things about yourself first. And it will inspire you to appreciate the process of creating a boat as much as having a boat.

This is an enjoyable little book, with some really wonderful meditations on craft and beauty. At the best points, you'll really be able to smell the wood shavings and epoxy.

But despite how often the author describes how difficult the project was, I found myself at the end thinking, "well that wasn't really so much work after all." The shop talk is not the point: Cheek really wants us to know how emotionally difficult the whole thing was, which more than a few times comes across as pretty self-indulgent. At times, he's fully aware of how building a boat in one's garage as a sort of self-inflicted life lesson *is* actually pretty self-indulgent thing to do, but there are just as many points where I wanted to just tell him to get over himself.

The book came in great condition. As for the plot, I thought too much space was given to his drinking problems.