Our first book had sold out a few years before, and we had the feel­ing it was time for a new edi­tion in our now-stand­ard robust soft­cov­er format, and that there remained an unplumbed audi­ence among people who, though per­haps not habitu­al read­ers of sail­ing books,…

Charlie Stock was a sin­gu­lar sail­or, who was for sixty years a part of the scenery on his home waters of the Thames Estuary. In his last book, pub­lished posthum­ously, he describes and handles the local fea­tures and haz­ards meet­ing the small boat sail­or, not only in…

Knees are an imme­di­ate indic­a­tion of the boatbuilder’s abil­ity to make good look­ing shapes. Ideally one would like to use an oak crook. However, in these hon­est times, crooks are pretty hard to come by and also must be well seasoned before use, par­tic­u­larly if…

Martin O’Scannall has enjoyed a love affair of more than forty years with his 1913 gaff cut­ter Sauntress, begin­ning with her rebuild and cul­min­at­ing in the glor­ies pic­tured here. Below is his account of her sojourn in a boat­yard at Brentford on the Thames in west…

By March of 1954 we had enough money for me to stop work­ing and begin build­ing in the farm loft. I cleared the chick­en shit out, blocked up the gaps in the walls and lev­elled the floor. Building a small boat alone is like an exer­cise in med­it­a­tion; through­out the…

[Sea-Country is now out of print but we thought you’d still enjoy this extract]Tony Smith is now the keep­er of Charlie Stock’s game little 16-foot gaff cut­ter Shoal Waters, and has made it his busi­ness to take her the length and breadth of the Thames estu­ary, and into…