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    How To Build A Boat: A Father, his Daughter, and the Unsailed Sea
    Unavailable
    How To Build A Boat: A Father, his Daughter, and the Unsailed Sea
    Unavailable
    How To Build A Boat: A Father, his Daughter, and the Unsailed Sea
    Audiobook9 hours

    How To Build A Boat: A Father, his Daughter, and the Unsailed Sea

    Written by Jonathan Gornall

    Narrated by Jonathan Gornall

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    ‘The passages he addresses directly to Phoebe are as tender as the father-daughter letters in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Seasons Quartet’ Times Literary Supplement

    ‘This book tells the inspiring story of how even the least skilled of us can make something wonderful if we invest enough time and love’ The Daily Mail

    'Both the book, and place, are magical' The Sunday Telegraph

    'When Jonathan Gornall decided to build a boat for his daughter, he had no experience and no practical skills. What followed was a very real labour of love.' The Scotsman

    One man learns the ancient skills of boat-building to connect with fatherhood.

    How to Build a Boat is the story of a thoroughly unskilled modern man who, inspired by his love of the sea and what it has taught him about life, sets out to build a traditional wooden boat as a gift for his newborn daughter. It is, he recognises, a ridiculously quixotic challenge for a man who, with a family and mortgage to support, knows little about woodworking and even less about boat-building. He isn’t even sure what type of boat he should build, what type of wood he should use, the tools he will need or, come to that, where on earth he will build it. He has much to consider, and even more to learn.

    But, undaunted by his ignorance, he embarks on a voyage of rediscovery, determined to navigate his way back to a time when a man could fashion his future and leave his mark on history using only time-honoured skills and the ancient tools and materials at hand. The journey begins with a search for clues in the once bustling, but now still, creeks and backwaters of his beloved Suffolk, where men once fashioned the might of Nelson’s navy from the great oaks that shadowed the water’s edge. If all goes to plan, it will end with a great little adventure, as father and daughter cast off together for a voyage of discovery that neither will forget, and both will treasure until the end of their days.

    A writer following in the bestselling footsteps of Adam Nicolson, Tim Moore and Charlie Connelly – discovering what make modern man tick through the discovery of a craft long forgotten.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio UK
    Release dateAug 16, 2018
    ISBN9781471176722
    Author

    Jonathan Gornall

    Jonathan Gornall is an award-winning freelance journalist, whose writing has appeared in The Daily Mail and The Times (London). While at The Times, he was the author of a weekly column, “Microwave Man,” that looked insightfully, and often humorously, at the role of man in the modern world. He published a book of the same title in 2006. He has twice attempted to row across the Atlantic, and lives on England’s east coast with his wife and daughter. 

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    Reviews for How To Build A Boat

    3.5/5

    9 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      How he made a clinker style dinghy for his daughter Phoebe. It was as difficult as it always looks, and took him a year off and on, but fortunately the account is mixed up with lots of very interesting stuff about his life and family, and his exploits trying to row across the Atlantic. Basically he never made it across the ocean so became desperate to finish off this boat project. What Phoebe will make of it in the long term is anybody's guess, I think I could get irritated by the performance of a short stout lug sail dinghy. Lots of interesting stuff about the Orwell, Ipswich and thereabouts. Also the account of his mother's pregnancy and her reaction to the father is very moving, and the reason he ended up at Wolverstone school.
    • 2/5
      I think most people buying the book were more interested in the father daughter relationship than the actual construction of the boat. His history ocean rowing is interesting, but without diagrams or photos, the technical relay of constructing the boat drags. I had to go online just to see what the boat looked like!
    • 3/5
      The story of how a man built a boat for his daughter. The author, who found himself becoming a father again at age 59, set about to leave his new born daughter a remembrance of himself. His troubled past family life obviously affected him, and he wanted to make sure that his child did not have to ever have the doubts about family that raced through his veins. His solution was to build this boat. Never mind that he had no idea of how to build it, nor any skills to accomplish it. He pressed on, to his eventual success. It's a good story. Spoiler: after reading the advance copy I received from NetGalley (which was an electronic copy, with no photos), I went online and found the author. There I found him and his daughter, in the boat, looking extremely happy. A happy ending!