The best boats float. Ask Farley Mowat, who bought one that wouldn't. Oh, his floated all right, after he'd had her hauled from the muck of a Newfoundland harbor and rebuilt her somewhat (from stem to stern, that is); but there was something about the Happy Adventure (sic) that made her more interesting than most pleasure craft (sic). She loved to fill herself with water and head for the bottom. Perhaps she really wanted to be a submarine. God knows, she tried often enough, the miracle being that Mr. Mowat lived to tell the tale [in "The Boat Who Wouldn't Float"].

But she met her match in her doughty sea-crazed skipper, who raised her, patched her, polished her, caulked her endlessly, talked her into believing she was a trim, obedient little schooner, not a mud turtle, and sailed her—or, rather, sailed with her; he acknowledges the uneasy...