As a young boy, rounding a bend in a remote Maine cove, Dave Roper stumbled upon two mermaids. No one believed him then. No one believes him now. But he kept watching and wondering: what is imagined and what is real? And while he watched and wondered during 50 years of waterborne life – as a boy, a teen, an adult, a father – what he pulled from the sea was not another mermaid, but the mystery, possibility, romance, joy, fear, and uncertainty that mermaids represent. Based on real experiences, these 30 stories take you on that journey. Once aboard you will: Share the fantasy world of a teenage solo cruising sailor as he meets his biggest challenge: a 22 year old woman. Enter the frenzied mind of a young man who falls overboard 300 miles from shore at night and looks death in the eye. Push down a few beers with Big Red, a legendary Mississippi River pilot, and experience the hard-scrabble world of river life. Climb aboard a 135 foot Mississippi River sternwheeler headed straight into a tornado, with 300 oblivious wedding guests on board. Join a young delivery skipper as he takes two very uncertain aspiring voyagers on world’s shortest circumnavigation attempt… aboard a floating Winnebago. Probe deep up a saltwater creek to meet the reclusive King of Yurtdom and his technology-free world of Mongolian tribal huts. Experience a 50th wedding anniversary at sea and a coincidence right out of the Twilight Zone. Cheer for an octogenarian as his grandson kidnaps him from the clutches of a nursing home for one long last sail on his old wooden sloop. So fill your favorite mug, settle into that stuffed reading chair, poke the stove a few times, and dive into Dave Roper’s new book, Watching for Mermaids.

Watching for Mermaids

Literature & Fiction

Roper, David H.

Genre Fiction

Points East Publishing, Inc.

MORE Tales From a Gimbaled Wrist is a diverse collection of rollicking yarns and introspective stories captured from real experience, and includes fictionalized stories, cruising recollections and more. This is the second such collection of short stories, anecdotes, and yarns drawn from a lifelong love of the sea, sailing, and cruising.

More Tales from a Gimbaled Wrist: Short Stories and Other Reflections Concerning a Lifelong Love of the Sea

Martel, Michael L.

If you have ever sat in your office cubby with its close walls and phony corporate tin-soldiers around you, or hated your day-to-day same-old box-stacking job and daydreamed about sailing away to the land of white beaches, coconut palms, turquoise waters and cool rum drinks, then this book is for you. It’s about a disillusioned young man who casts off the lines that tie him down like Gulliver, and chases his dreams south to the warm waters of the Caribbean in search of a new life. Captain Nate Williams’ adventure begins where such daydreams leave off. Approaching middle age alone, and feeling that his life has become a monotonous dead-end with a clock forever ticking down, he becomes fascinated by the idea of escaping to sea after meeting with a solo circumnavigator who has just returned from an around-the-world voyage alone. Nate becomes obsessed with what the sailor has learned, and how it has seemingly changed his life. Sailing away represents freedom, a break-out, a refreshing change, if only he can take the big step. He’s haunted by his past, by remembrances and echoes of people who have gone, and he fears growing old and dying in obscurity without ever having truly lived. As a youth, he was captivated by the great adventure books like the Bounty trilogy. He dreams of exotic destinations; he wants to make a radical change in his life. Captain Nate has sailed to many places delivering boats, but these delivery boats were never his own boat. Nate can’t afford a fancy new sailboat or yacht to carry him away on his dreamed-of adventure, so he finds an old but sturdy wooden sailboat and, applying the lessons that his late boatbuilding Grandfather had taught him, re-built her himself, making her seaworthy and ready for the open sea. Captain Nate departs from his native New England heading to Bermuda, and then continues on to the Caribbean islands where he meets new and interesting friends and fellow sea-vagabond characters. He meets with storms, danger, and other hazards along the way, eventually finding romance with a girl from the islands, only to ultimately learn the true meaning of loss, and ultimately redemption, wisdom, and understanding of his place in the world and on the sea. He seeks a life, at first, without consequences and 'to be needed nowhere'; and later learns that he has not conquered the sea, but as many learn from their experiences surviving a passage across the mighty ocean, that he has, as a fellow sailor puts it, been 'allowed to pass.' Nate lives the dream that many of us share but never realize, setting out to explore, discover, and experience everything that can while life and a tiny spark of optimism still abide in his heart and soul. If you share such daydreams, this book and Captain Nate will take you there, through storms, a hurricane, wild beach bars and fights, crazy danger, lovable characters, and more.

Trade Winds Vagabond

What do heroes look like? Certainly not like Big Red, a washed-up 290 pound Vietnam vet and ex-Mississippi River towboat pilot haunted by his past. There’s no ‘S’ on his huge chest, no cape on his back. He’s certainly no hero. Or is he? The answer is in his notebook. Penniless and cooped up in a Minnesota veterans’ home by the banks of the Mississippi, he’s lost everything but his riotous wit. He won’t speak of his past with anyone. Instead, he writes in his notebook and stares out toward the River, wishing to once again ‘drive through a bend on the Mighty Miss’. Enter Wihopa, aka Toddy, Red’s nurse, a wise, nurturing and beautiful Lakota Sioux woman. She’s dauntless, spiritual, has a wit to match Red’s, and is a genius at transformational healing. Toddy grants Red his fervent wish, and together they head downriver on a tow. At day’s end, trapped by a freak fall blizzard and hunkered down aboard his old houseboat, Cirrhosis of the River, Red learns from Toddy what being a hero really means, as she guides him back through the profound ethical choices of his past: from the horrors of Vietnam, to his bizarre confrontation with life, death, and the law, and finally to an astounding revelation.

Rounding the Bend: The Life and Times of Big Red

Roper, Mr. David H.

This captivating blend of twenty stories perfectly captures life's tangles, knots and bends-from the crushed fantasies of a little girl, to the teenage world of a modern-day Odysseus lured to shore by romance, to near death in the midst of a frozen young marriage, and, finally, to an elder's wise reflections and reconciliation at journey's end.

Beyond Mermaids: Life's Tangles, Knots and Bends

Short Stories & Anthologies

My fascination with floating in a boat, and working with wind and water to travel the watery world, led me to building boats. This interest stirs in people around the world. For thousands of years wooden boats have been successfully built and operated on the waters that surround us. Often the builders of these boats worked to preserve jealously guarded crafts. Today, marketing has left these crafts free to all who would apply their hands to tools and create vessels of their own. In this book, I present the processes followed to build a Norwegian Pram and an Arthur Spurling rowboat, along with discussion and anecdote on the impetus and skills that make building these and other boats possible. The pram, a lapstrake boat with transoms at both ends, built without plans, is the simplest of vessels built with techniques perfected by Vikings 1000 years ago. The lapped method of plank fashioning and fastening described can be used for a wide range of other designs. Arthur Spurling built hundreds of rowboats that were treasured by their users on the coast of his native Maine. The building process described will produce a fine rowing boat but can also be used in the construction of any other boat built to plans. Everyone comes to projects like these from their own perspective, with their own experience and resources. Even the simplest boat is a complex construction of varied parts. Square rarely occurs in boats, fair and fit rule. "Fair" means smooth in line and surface, without sharp bends. Sound wood bends in fair curves, making the creation of beautiful wooden boats seem natural. "Fit" means the parts come together tight and evenly. Shapes needed to join with another are patterned for through one or another method of spiling, establishing the shape of a curve. Cutting and finishing wood to match the shape needed for fit calls sharp knives in the form of saws, planes and chisels. Boat building woods are not the easiest to find these days, but wherever trees grow there are still people cutting them and turning logs into lumber. Finding these sources and using available wood to build your boat presents challenges, but pleasurable and interesting challenges. Besides the building processes, I tell something of the experience I have had leading me and guiding me through the building of boats. This book will be a guide to you, but you will find other guides for yourself, not least by thinking your own way through the process of building your boat. Have fun.

AN INTRODUCTION TO WOODEN BOAT BUILDING: ALWAYS MORE TO LEARN

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

DANIELSON, THAD

Crafts & Hobbies

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