Messing
About In Boats
edited and published
by Bob Hicks
(click
here for subscription information)
Reviewed by John
Welsford
It was very close to 11 years
ago that I first came across Messing About in Boats. I'd fallen
off a ladder and rather badly injured myself so had a great
deal of lying down to do. My Wife Denny used to bring me a big
pile of reading every few hours and I must have read the covers
off pretty well everything I had in the house, including the
very small print ! Hidden away amongst the other titbits in
the "On the Waterfront" section of WoodenBoat were
contact details for all sorts of organizations and publications.
There were newsletters, home published books, clubs and collectors,
the occasional catalogue, and, Messing About in Boats from a
guy in Wenham which I guessed to be somewhere up the right hand
side of the map of the USA.
I wrote to a lot of these people, I got replies from some, Sam
Devlin sent a catalogue, I got a years magazines from Bob! I
can tell him honestly that the mail every second week brought
several hours of relief from having to lie there and look at
the ceiling. Several hours in which my mind could roam the inlets
and bays of the Atlantic coast, leaving a very sore and restricted
body behind for the time being. Several hours in which I was
not alone in my bed but could spend a while with someone in
their workshop, a welcome relief from the extreme boredom of
my convalescence.
Messing About in Boats was just my style, ordinary people, people
I could relate to , stories of exploration in simple boats,
voyages made to new destinations, tales of woe and misfortune
when bad weather struck a tiny craft and the occupant had to
walk a waterlogged boat home along the shore, building projects
that succeeded in the face of severe lack of resources and skills,
victories and losses, handy hints, Bolgers wonderful design
proposals soaked up a lot of time( I must have built a dozen
in my mind) and even today that file box of magazines has tags
on all of the articles and is regularly referred to.
Even the ads were worth a browse, dinghies and plans, sources
of materials and information, boats for sale and the tools with
which to build , all were read and read again. I will forever
be grateful for the escape that those simply produced magazines
afforded me, and I have contributed some of my own work over
the years so that others might read of what I am up to in return.
I've become much more involved with recreational boating and
boatbuilding over the years, and am now contributing regularly
to several magazines. It is with real pleasure that I have undertaken
to supply Bob with regular copy for MAIB; to enjoy him you don't
have to be in the same circumstances that I was in when I first
met Bob Hicks and his twice a month escape and information machine,
but if you are I really hope that it helps you as much as it
did me.
John Welsford.
Designer
