The Book of Wooden Boats

First of all, let me just say that I'm somewhat saddened to be the first person to review this photographic treasure of classic wooden boats 8 years after it's been published. People look at books for different reasons. My reasons were for inspiration and ideas. I'm in the process of looking for a wooden boat design. Here I found much to study. As soon as I got the book, I took it with me to a restaurant and studied each wooden sailboat carefully. The lines, the sail plan, and the accompanying text. 3 hours latter I completed my first tour of the sailboat portion of the book. Since then, I've looked at it thoroughly on at least 3 other occasions. The book is organized into 5 chapters; sailboats, powerboats, working boats (the majority of which are sailboats), open boats (such as canoes and daysailors), and finally sailing yachts. The sailboats that make up this list are all very traditional and classic, what you would expect from wooden boats. Many of them were built early in the 19th century, even a couple in the late 1800's. A lot of them are gaff rigged. Two pages are dedicated to each boat, consisting of 2 or 3 photographs along with a paragraph about the boat, and finally stats such as length, beam, designer, builder, and where photographed. As I stated earlier, people pick up these books for different reasons. My reasons were beyond simply looking at attractive boats, it was for information. I was a little annoyed that one other pertinent statistic was not included, that being draft. Since these are photographs of the boats in the water, you have no idea of what lies below the waterline without that statistic, and it is simply so pertinent. My ranking of 5 stars is not given out easily. It has to be a book that I can't put down. This was very close, but I have to settle on 4 stars. In short, if you are moved by the classic designs of traditional wooden boats, whether sail or power, you will find much here to visually feast upon.