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Recently purchased "Holmes of the Humber" through SCA. This is more like a collection of George Holmes logs of his various sailboats and need not be read in order. The book is replete with his drawings and some of his writing (since its in cursive) may be a bit difficult to decipher. It covers his sailing both in England and on the continent and many of the boats depicted are small open boats. One of his boats was a canoe yawl named "EEL" In the Sept - Oct issue of Small Craft Advisor there is a review of such a boat. I like two things about the book (1) The drawings accurately depict small boat sailing 100 years or more ago. It shows some on the sailing grounds as being little more than creeks and (2) since its more like a log than a novel you can pick up and read any chapter in any order you wish. Perfect book for those short periods when you have nothing other to do but "sit and wait"

yes it is a GREAT book. the drawings alone make it wonderful.

I must make one small correction. I said his writing was in "cursive". In looking at it more closely it was more like it was in the type setting known as "anaconda" where the letters are linked but are more a block style. Still, for these eyes, a bit of a problem on occasion!!

I thought you might find this of interest: https://youtu.be/zVCjopbXMF0
"Holmes of the Humber - a most excellent book"
Cheers,
Robert

I was sorry to see Dylan Winters stop writing for SCA. I always enjoyed his columns. I thought about the fact Eel was only 21 ft long and about 6 ft of beam. My boat is 22 ft with an 8 ft beam and I am cramped on that (I have a whopping 4 foot of head room). I was also fascinated by the width of some of the rivers he was discussing. They look like they are under 20 feet in width in some cases.

This book and Compleat Cruiser are excellent books for small boat cruisers