Trying to find the source of an essay...

[MJC]

It had to do with thoughts of boatbuilding taking over your mind, producing a unhealthy dissatisfaction with the rest of your life. The essence of the essay was that persons so afflicted had no other therapy or recourse or alternative than to build a boat.

Don't have back issues of anything, but I think maybe I saw it in either WB or MAIB a couple of years ago.

Thanks in advance, I know somebody here remembers it well, and perhaps used it as justification.

[Steve McMahon]

I know the one you mean and have a copy of it somewhere.... I will let you know if I can find it, I've moved a few times and some stuff has gone astray. The last time I read it I ended up building a catamaran, I'm about due to read it again.

[skuthorp]

Can't help with the reference, but I think it's like JeffH says - throw a pile of wood into a barn and it's amazing what comes out! - I think it's the creative urge in all of us that just has to be expressed some way.

[Art Read]

Arthur Ransom perhaps? "The desire to build a boat starts out as a small cloud on a serene horizon. It eventually fills the entire sky until you can think of nothing else. You have to build to regain your freedom." (Or words to that effect... that was from memory, I think he wrote it better! ;) )

[MJC]

You have to build to regain your freedom!

Thanks Art, that sounds like it was a part of it.

Next really dumb question, who's Arthur Ransom?

[Hughman]

Next really dumb question, who's Arthur Ransom?

Heh. You have a treat in store for you.

Author of the childrens series "Swallows and Amazons".

He's a childrens author like Mark Twain is a childrens author.

http://www.arthur-ransome.org/ar/index.html

[Hughman]

I think the quote is from "Racundra's Last Cruise", but I can't find my copy. Not one of Ransome's childrens books, in any case.