While still a young boy, Robb White built his first boat, hewn from the tin roof of an abandoned chicken coop in the backyard, stamping and primping it into shape, then testing it out in the back creek. White knows everything there is to know about getting on the water and staying there as long as you possibly can. Today, without any formal training, White constructs some of the most sought-after wooden boats around.
In How to Build a Tin Canoe, this Southern raconteur and self-taught, expert wooden-boat builder offers a wryly humorous journey through a life lived on the water and the lessons learned along the way. These include how to make a canoe from the tin roof of a chicken coop, how to survive rampaging monkeys, and how to get a turtle to stop eating your boat. In chapters such as "Seagull: in which I learn not to be so gullible" and "The Canned Ham Incident: in which I did not participate, so hurrah for the other side," White recounts tall tales of a childhood spent exploring the Gulf of Mexico and of growing up, or not really growing up, to share his accrued wisdom with others.
For lovers of fishing, boating, and great storytelling in the tradition of Garrison Keillor, Roy Blount, Jr., and Bailey White (the author's sister), Robb White's How to Build a Tin Canoe is wise and laugh-out-loud funny to the point of tears. It seems a shame to tear a man away from a life so idyllic, but Robb White's days of hiding out on the water are over. How to Build a Tin Canoe is destined to become a classic.