A Storm Without Rain
Publisher: WoodenBoat Books$16.45Jan Lee Adkins was born on the Ohio River in West Virginia. He was raised in Wheeling when it was still an industrial center and smog blocked out the sky until Midday. Jan attended public school in St. Clairsville, Ohio, a small town in the coalfields where boys of substance were absent on the first day of rabbit season.
Solstice, A Mystery of the Season
Publisher: WoodenBoat Books$14.25Jan Lee Adkins was born on the Ohio River in West Virginia and raised in Wheeling. He attended public school in St. Clairsville, Ohio. Jan has lived in Ohio, the Washington, DC, megalopolis, and in Marin County, California, but his real home is the area around Buzzards Bay in Massachusetts, between New Bedford and Wareham. This is where his children were born and he learned to sail.
Workboats
Publisher: WoodenBoat Books$13.15A tale of the sea without varnish and polished brass. The characters in this miniature narrative are the rough and purpose-built workboats that live with the weather and the hard realities of the water. A boatyard owner’s concern for a lost fisherman reverberates through the working community of watermen, giving us an insider’s glimpse of the vessels and seafolk that work the sea for a living. This is a read-aloud book with a wealth of “I see” details that will call for as much parent-child sharing as reading.
Moving Heavy Things
Publisher: WoodenBoat Books$15.35The almost forgotten craft of shifting large weights with brains instead of engines. Beginning with practical rules for moving like “Get the Ming vase out of the Room. All the way out,” and “What goes up comes down heavier.” This is a fascinating description of applied physics in the real world. If you move engine blocks, concrete mooring sinkers, or nothing heavier than this book from table to lap, you’ll enjoy the encouraging narrative and the precise drawings. Not everyone moves coffins with marbles or sheet steel with baseballs, but you might very well find an idea to help you move Uncle Harry’s monstrous bathtub out of the basement, or a reluctant oak stump out of the yard.
The Craft of Sail
Publisher: WoodenBoat Books$17.95We are pleased to bring this book back into print, as it focuses on why and how sailing “works.” It’s an excellent guide to understanding boats and how the wind and water affect them. Author/illustrator Jan is an “explainer”… and this book does just that.
You’ll see drawings of different types of boats and understand what makes a schooner a schooner, a catboat a catboat, a yawl a yawl… and more. He uses ants and peanuts to explain vectors. How can you miss-out on ants and peanuts? And yes, the book gives you the basics of sail maneuvers.
Line:Tying it Up, Tying it Down
Publisher: WoodenBoat Books$14.95Jan Lee Adkins was born on the Ohio River in West Virginia and raised in Wheeling. He studied architecture at Ohio State University and apprenticed as a designer for several years. He shifted his major to literature and creative writing and graduated, after more than eight years of university, with a plain BA.
