Schooner Master: A Portrait of David Stevens Book

David Stevens was thirty-eight when he took up the boatbuilding trade. He went on to build more than seventy boats, among them some of the swiftest schooners on the Atlantic coast. He was given Canada's highest honour, the Order of Canada for his work as a master craftman of schooners. Some of Stevens' finest and fastest boats were built after his retirement, when he worked alone in the shed behind his home. He was equally skilled as a sailor and even in his retirement years won numerous international sailing competitions at the helm of his own boats. In Schooner Master, Peter Carnahan draws a sensitive portrait of this artist in wood who called himself, the last of a breed. Carnahan walks woodlots with Stevens, travels with him to Big Tancook, and observes him as he builds Evelyn, the fifth boat in his retirement fleet. The result is an unforgettable close-up of Stevens as a master craftsman and yachtsman, a quiet but commanding presence, and a fierce but gentlemanly competitor.