scudding (Paperback)

Suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a result of time spent in submarines during the so-called Cold War, George Maynard leaves a Navy psycho ward in 1964 with an honorable discharge and the clinical psychologist’s warning that the treatment he has received is patently inadequate for cases like his. Broke, with a wife and three children to support, he sets out to find some way to put his life back together. He learns woodcarving to make a living, then builds an old fashioned wooden sailboat, puts his family aboard, and circumnavigates the world under sail, without the assistance of an auxiliary engine. Told by the mariner himself, Scudding is a tale in turn lyrical and profane, idyllic and frightening, joyous, funny, and edge-of-your-seat thrilling.

In 1960 George Sherlock Maynard dropped out of college and went to sea in a submarine. Four years later, suffering from the ongoing strangeness of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) he left the Navy through a psycho ward and took up woodcarving and wooden boatbuilding. By 1973 he had built, with his own hands, a much admired copy of Spray, the 37-foot vessel in which Captain Joshua Slocum became the first man to sail alone around the world (1895-98). Scud was the name George gave his new boat when she was launched in 1972. In the ensuing five years (1973-78), with his wife and three children and dog for crew, he sailed Scud completely around the globe, without the assistance of an auxiliary engine or a big bank account. How this was accomplished, and the underlying, driving forces behind the voyage, are the weft and warp of this interwoven tale. SCUDDING, a work of creative non-fiction, is his first book He has previously published several stories in WoodenBoat magazine: Zulu, WB number 129, April 1996 Salish Star, Zen in a Rowboat, WB number 139, November/December 1997 The Unmodified Crusoe, WB number 142, May/June 1998 Zulu, WB number 150, September/October 1999 A New Lead Keel for a California Schooner, WB number 162, October 2001 A Boatload of Ambition, Building a rowing dory-for a circumnavigation, WB number 176, January/February 2004 Over the years, George has garnered an eclectic education as a bus boy, dishwasher, greens keeper, caddy, cowboy, construction worker, hay stacker, boat builder, slaughterhouse hand, story teller, woodcarver, long-haul truck driver, wheat farmer, sailor, welder, and writer. "Anything I could do to make a living," he says. "Trading honest, creative work for a living is the real challenge. I can't imagine the guilt and boredom of having it all given to you; or, worse yet, the shame of stealing bread from the blind. From an early age I loved building things from ideas conjured in my head, and I guess I never graduated beyond that way of making things happen."