Small Craft Advisory: A Book About the Building of a Boat

Small Craft Advisory is an enchanting book about Louis Rubin’s obsession with boats and his years of often hilarious boating adventures.

When Louis Rubin was thirteen, he built a leaky little boat and paddled it out to the edge of the ship channel in Charleston, South Carolina, where he felt the inexorable pull of the water. Fifty years and dozens of boats later—sailboats, powerboats, inboards and outboards—the pull is as strong as ever.

In the tradition established by Mark Twain, Joseph Conr...