BOOKS BUZZING AT BOAT SHOW by Jan Harber
I am not sure how the sales of new boats were going at the Excel Boat Show last week, but if the number of folk thronging around the shelves and queueing at the tills on the Kelvin Hughes stand is anything to go by, the sale of nautical books and charts is doing well.
I spent a very pleasant time on the stand on the last Saturday of the Show, signing copies of Wiley Nautical's Cruising Companion East Coast Rivers and chatting to the many East Coast sailing enthusiasts who passed by. We have had a great deal of very favourable feedback on this latest edition, which it seems is now widely regarded as 'the East Coast yachtsman's bible'.
It is gratifying to know that all the hard work put in, not just by me but also by the Wiley Nautical design team and the production team at Nautical Data, is being appreciated.
The cartoonist, and fellow East Coast sailor, Mike Peyton was among several other authors on the Kelvin Hughes stand who were signing copies of their books. Rather like East Coast Rivers, Mike goes back a long way – he did a fortnightly cartoon for Yachts&Yachting magazine when I was on their editorial team in the 1980s. Nowadays almost every sailing magazine you pick up will include one or more of his cartoons or illustrations, and Mike's books are as popular as ever.
My other half was pleased with his visit to the Show as he picked up rope for a new genoa halyard at a very good price from the Benfleet-based Dauntless Boatyard Chandlery, which by all accounts is an Aladdin's Cave of a chandlery ranking with the magnificent emporium that was the long since disappeared Thomas Foulkes of Leytonstone.
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