For my daughter’s voyage through life I built her a boat
UNTIL recently, massive ‘rogue waves’ that appear out of the blue to wipe out whole ships were dismissed as the myths of salty seadogs. But, in August 2004, around the time weather sensor buoys were providing conclusive proof of the phenomenon, journalist Jonathan Gornall was attempting to row across the Atlantic in a boat that was hit by one.
Gornall was submerged until ‘stars danced in my skull’. Luckily, another crew member hauled him to the wreckage and activated the emergency beacon. They were rescued by a banana boat.
When his wallet washed ashore on the west coast of France the following year, Gornall wondered whether his body would have made a similar journey had events taken a different turn. Yet he remained determined to make another attempt . . . until the birth of his daughter, Phoebe, in 2014.
Becoming a father again at the age of 58 (Gornall has a son in his 30s from a previous relationship) flipped his world more dramatically than any wave. Gazing at his daughter, Gornall knew immediately that he would never risk depriving her of a father by returning to the Atlantic. But another crazy plan began to form.
He would build Phoebe a boat. Not a fibreglass kit boat, no. He would build her a proper wooden clinker: classic, beautiful and ideal for messing about in.
There was only one problem: Gornall was dreadful at DIY. But this book tells the inspiring story of how even the least skilled of us can make something wonderful if we invest enough time and love.
Gornall sweeps his readers up in the romance of carpentry. He makes you smell the wood shavings and feel the deep satisfaction as joints lock into place. His account is interspersed with chunks of autobiography. We learn about his alcoholic mother and difficult childhood. He’s frank about his gratitude at getting a second chance at fatherhood.
Twelve months after buying the plans for Phoebe’s clinker, he lifts his four-year-old daughter aboard. ‘This was a thing of simple, ancient beauty, derived from the bounty of aged trees and the sweat of good, honest toil — my toil,’ he says. ‘Nothing machine-made or shop-bought could ever be its equal in value. I had made this.’