A Unit of Water, a Unit of Time

March 1, 1999
Even readers with no special interest in boats are likely to be caught up in this elegant homage to Maine boatbuilder Joel White (son of E.B. White), who pursued his obsession with the time-honored craft of designing wooden boats while battling cancer. Whynott (Giant Bluefin) made 17 trips to the Brooklin Boat Yard in Maine, where the meticulous Joel, his son Steve and a yard crew spent two years designing and building the W-76, a grand and graceful racing yacht. While Steve runs the yard, Joel--with a section of his lung removed and walking on crutches after a bone graft--undergoes chemotherapy and learns to walk again, enduring metastatic lung cancer with stoic fortitude. Whynott, who traces his own love of boats back to his Pilgrim ancestors, indelibly captures such laconic New England types as boat painter Raymond Eaton, who, whenever asked how a job came out, always replied, "It could be better." Old-timers mingle with boat-loving transplants from Wall Street, Oregon and England. With understated grace, the author evokes a sense of maritime community as well as a fierce devotion to boats and a love of the sea, which emerges as an almost mystical form of communion with nature and the cosmos. His father, who sailed a 30-foot cutter, instilled in Joel not only his love of sailing but also, according to Whynott, a clarity of line and economy of style that resonated in Joel's boat designs and in his essays for WoodenBoat magazine. Joel's death in 1997, months before the launch of the W-76, is heartbreaking. E.B. White would have approved of this quietly profound book: it's a real beauty.

June 1, 1999
For this heartfelt tribute to boatbuilder Joel White, son of writer E.B. White, Whynott (Giant Bluefin, LJ 5/1/95) spent a year in Brooklin, ME, watching and writing about the building of wooden boats. During that time, Joel White was diagnosed with cancer and began to build his last boat, the W-76, a wooden racing yacht that would incorporate a lifetime's experience in his art. Alternating among the lives of E.B. White; Joel; his son, Steve; and the building of boats, Whynott skillfully weaves a story that speaks both of the love of these craft and the art of writing. Local color is provided by descriptions of Brooklin and its inhabitants, and examples of Maine humor and the hard work involved in building these boats are interspersed throughout. Technical detail regarding the design and construction of boats and the aesthetic pride in seeing an idea come to fruition are also apparent. Still, while highly evocative of the age-old art of wooden boatbuilding, this book will appeal to a limited audience of boating aficionados and "down-east" residents.--Harold N. Boyer, Florence-Darlington Technical Coll., SC

Copyright 1999 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 1999
Whynott spent a year at the Brooklin Boat Yard, Brooklin, Maine, observing master shipbuilder Joel White, son of legendary writer E. B. White of "Charlotte's Web" fame. Joel is determined to create his final masterpiece, a wooden racing yacht, in spite of his lung cancer. Whynott chronicles this labor of love, from early blueprints to the yacht's actually being erected by Joel's son Steve. Intertwined with this project is a history of New England shipbuilding and the stoic men and women of the region. Ultimately, though, the book is about the connections between the males of the White family. Joel, for example, is revealed as the small boy in E. B. White's famous essay "Once More to the Lake," a reflection on mortality and those qualities a father passes on to a son. Likewise, Whynott discovers much of Joel in Joel's son Steve. A compassionate, many-layered portrait of a family and a region. ((Reviewed March 15, 1999))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1999, American Library Association.)