Book Description

Garden's career as both a yacht designer and builder spanned well over six decades and untold hundreds of boats sailing canoes, salmon trollers, tugboats, cruising ketches, gaff-rigged cutters with plumb stems, easily built pocket cruisers, racers, luxury yachts, trading schooners, pulling boats, classic power launches, production fiberglass cruisers and patrol boats. Such a great variety of boats each given his special touch. Garden's writing style is just as far-ranging and eclectic as his boats, whimsical and informative, light-hearted yet solidly grounded, serious, thought-provoking and thoroughly engaging. In short, as good as his drawings. The original edition of Yacht Designs was published in 1977 and, after several printings, had gone completely out of print. In his moreorless retirement, Bill Garden had time to write more of the essays on his own designs that made him a popular feature of The Rudder magazine. He revised and expanded the essays from the original edition and added over 30 more boats, many never before published, and even a few dream ships that were never built, all combined and brought together in this volume. Each essay is as different as the boat it describes, sometimes explaining the building process or a particular aspect of it in detail, or the events that led to a design, or the individuals involved, or the evolution of a yacht type, or Bill's own unique outlook on life and the boats he loved. So pick a boat and climb aboard, or just start at the beginning and go on to the end. You might just find your own dream ship in these pages. See why Bill Garden has been an inspiration to succeeding generations of yacht designers! We can only thank God for his talent and generosity in encouraging and mentoring us, and his hospitality at his island office.