About us…

Thank you for your interest in our little magazine devoted to the pleasures of messing about in boats. After 38 years and just over 750 issues we have yet to run out of fascinating and informative articles (mostly submitted by our readers) extolling the pleasures to be had messing about in affordable small boats unspoiled by today’s overwhelming technology.

Our Home Page features the cover of the current issue, and its table of contents on this page illustrates a typical range of topics covered in each 76-page issue. Looking down the list you will find a broad range of reports on events and gatherings, reader adventures afloat, historical stories from simpler times, readers’ tales of designing, building and restoring the boats of their dreams, as well as regular columns by contributing readers on a variety of small boat related topics. Included on this website is a feature story from this issue to better give you a look at what sort of reading you might expect to enjoy.

If these stimulate further interest we suggest that you request the Free Sample Copy we offer. Should this then suggest you’d like to see more but still are wary of committing $40 for a full year subscription, we offer a three month Trial Subscription for $10. All these options can be found on the Subscription Order Form page.

Another service we provide to any interested persons (subscribers or not) are scanned copies of bygone articles found in the Index of Articles 1983-2000. These can be ordered from amongst the thousands of articles we published during those years from the Index, the details are located on the “Index of Articles 1983-2000” introductory page. The Index stops in 2000 as that is as far as a volunteer reader undertook to inventory our archives at that time. We have had no time to pursue indexing the years 2001 to the present, we’ve been too busy turning out the magazines we now offer.

I launched this magazine in the spring of 1983 as I found the available consumer oriented magazines were not speaking to my interests and the various small club newsletters were too small to cover the multitude of topics I felt were out there of interest to myself and others interested in do-it-yourself small boating. Today we offer 76 pages full of small boat news in six issues bi/monthly.

Bob Hicks, Editor & Publisher

On the Cover ...

Our January 15, 2004 issue saw the first appearance of Robert Summers' "Shiver Me Timbers" cartoon page on our inside back cover. I chose that spot as it is pretty well understood in the mag biz that a magazine needs something to look for back there so readers won't quit when they get toward the back pages where normally lots of ads can be found. I also recall from my childhood years that the "funnies" could be found on the back pages of the daily newspaper.

Since then Robert has't missed an issue, 279 to date. It took a while to count 'em up on my fingers but the count is correct. Time now, I thought to move him up front for this issue starting our 39th year. On our cover he has assembled a gathering of some of the many characters who people his pages, usually enacting scenes that those of us who mess around in boats can recognize. He describes his work as, "the same old jokes, but in boats!"