Publishing update; the book cover outside and in; about Shetland boat drawings in the book; the South Australia Wooden Boat Festival; this week’s artifact from The Aegre voyage, and updates to the website.
The Voyage of The Aegre story is almost ready to go to the printer. That is to say Page maker Dr Digby James in Oswestry (UK) is putting the final touches to the layout. He’s part of our Vinycomb Press Editorial and Publishing team. It’s moderately complicated because apart from the text, we have a dozen maps, six drawings and eight pages of photos.
And then Publishing date is 27 July 2023 – 15 weeks away.
Finally the cover is done, designed by Gene Carl Feldman. He’s another member of our Vinycomb Press team. The ends of the cover fold in as a flap back and front.
And then on the reverse of the cover, the flaps open out to reveal maps of the course of The Aegre. In the front across the Atlantic, and across the Pacific in the back.
As a result we think it looks pretty special. Gene found these charts, in a Boston library. The Atlantic one is from 1797 and the Pacific one from 1849 (both long out of copyright). Aboard The Aegre, we were given and used several Pacific charts of about the same age as the one we’ve reproduced here. I still have some of them.
Later this month (29-30 April) I’ll be at the biennial South Australia Wooden Boat Festival at Goolwa at the mouth of the Murray River, a bit south of Adelaide.
I’ve been a few times before. It’s always an exotic mix of traditional wood-burning paddle steamers from up the river, vintage river sailing boats, putt-putts, and jazz bands. All together with delicious food and South Australian beers and wines. See https://www.sawoodenboatfestival.com.au/ Out on the water I’ve learnt NOT to get in the way of racing riverboat paddle steamers.
This week on the website about The Aegre Voyage I’ve added another artifact I still have from the voyage. It’s a little Suunto hand-bearing compass. It’s very precious to me. Read why: https://nicholasgrainger.com.au/?page_id=839 I’ve also added a Media tab beneath which is PR stuff about the book. Included are a new Advance Information sheet, author bio, reviews, and details of how to get an advance copy of the book for review.
That’s all for this week. Next week I hope to be writing that the book is ready to go to print. It’s being published by Vinycomb Press and I’ll explain the torturous path to publication. In the artifact section of the website I’ll write about our difficulty with measuring accurate time aboard The Aegre, why it was important and how we eventually solved the problem.
If you have a request for a topic on The Aegre voyage that you’d like me to address in a post or any comment, please contact me. And as ever, please share this with a friend.
Thank you, Nick Grainger
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