The Wooden Boat Care and Repair Bible, by Uwe Baykowski and Anna-Marie Frick. Published by Adlard Coles, www.bloomsbury.com, 160 pp., illus. $44.95. ebooks are available.
Available from The WoodenBoat Store (www.woodenboatstore.com)
Uwe Baykowski is something of a legend in German wooden-boat circles. Since he built his first boat at age 11, he has been passionate about the sea; in the 60 years since then he has built up a phenomenal trove of knowledge. At age 13, he set off with his brother for a cruise to neighboring Denmark without his parents’ knowledge. At age 16, he was given a dinghy cruiser, which he sailed around the Baltic Sea for several years. He taught himself boatbuilding by working on boats in Greece, Portugal, and the U.K. In the 1980s, the German government asked him to build a replica of a medieval Hanseatic cog. Since 1987, he has advised boatowners on the restoration of (mostly) old wooden boats, not just in Germany but around the world. In short, Baykowski knows his stuff. And it’s his calm and knowledgeable voice that carries you steadily through his new book, The Wooden Boat Care and Repair Bible, which he co-authored with Anna-Marie Frick—a literature scholar and sailor. Baykowski’s knowledge of boatbuilding and repair is indisputable, and it’s a service to the wooden-boat community that, with Frick’s collaboration, it’s been captured and committed to paper.