‘Wooden Boats’ reveals vessels’ chaaracter, soul> Informative text adds depth to powerful pictures

THE GUIDE TO WOODEN BOATS, photographs by Benjamin Mendlowitz, text by Maynard Bray, W.W. Norton & Co., 1997, $19.95.

It must be really hard to be a teacher, passionately loving a subject and having to spend your days trying to make uninterested students feel what you feel. That dilemma is brought to mind by this little book which measures barely 6 by 7 inches. It has some of the most beautiful pictures of the most beautiful sailboats in the world.

It would be a pity if the casual browser were to hastily reject this book as being of limited interest. I can think of a wide variety of people who would love its contents.

Appearing in the dead of winter, this book does for the boat lover what seed catalogs do for the gardener. Spending a few hours with it won’t make spring come any faster, but it will make this disagreeable winter a little more bearable. For those of us who are unable to spend a month in the Caribbean, gazing at pictures of June on the Maine coast is a tolerable substitute.

Any artist or art aficionado who is the least bit interested in the composition or color of seascapes or skyscapes should own this book. Any reader innocent enough to believe that the sea is unfailingly blue or green and the sky is always blue or gray should take a close look at these pictures. Apparently there has been a move afoot in recent years by nefarious photographers to gild nature by means of computer. Mendlowitz has taken the pledge, and the book carries the photo verite seal of authenticity. What you see is what his camera saw.

People interested in maritime history should have this book, as well as people who are just interested in objects of beauty, many of which were built right here in Maine. Several of the boats that weren’t built here now spend their summers sailing here.

Supplementing Mendlowitz’s breathtaking camera artistry are captions by Maynard Bray. This pair works together like strawberries and shortcake, and the final result is just as sweet. If you are already a sailor, and you read the captions carefully, you can pick up tips on sail handling as Bray discusses boat types. A distinctly local flavor to this work is evident — both men are connected with the Brooklin area of the coast. To give the book an even stronger down-home flavor, the foreword is by Joel White, also of Brooklin. The book includes several products by White, a builder and designer of some distinction.

The book is organized into six sections defined by sail rig. There are pictures of boats ranging in size from the 7-foot 7-inch nutshell pram to the 132-foot schooner Victory Chimes. The good glossary is really quite educational, as is an index which helps you search by boat name, builder or designer, a very nice feature.

The book’s size is a strength as well as a disadvantage. Unlike coffee table books, you can carry this one everywhere. I do think that Mendlowitz’s photos deserve a much larger presentation. Maybe the publisher should come out with a line of posters.

Having owned wooden and fiberglass sailboats in recent years, I am well aware that the newer materials require far less maintenance than their wooden counterparts, which aren’t as popular with the general boating public. Those wooden boats, however, were built by men who attached cedar planks to frames of oak just as their grandfathers did, using many of the same tools their great-grandfathers used. The materials came out of the woods near the shore, not out of an oil well in Venezuela. Wooden boats have history. Wooden boats have character. Wooden boats have souls.