By Joel Thurtell
Plug Nickel is back.
In fact, the boat named “Plug Nickel” never went away.
But since June 2005, my columns about my adventures with the wooden Lightning sailboat hull that eventually came to be christened “Plug Nickel” came to an abrupt end.
Readers of JOTR most likely don’t know what I’m talking, or rather, writing, about. For some time, now in the distant past, I wrote essays for what many would consider a very obscure journal, the Lightning “Flashes.”
I was sad to stop writing those columns, which numbered somewhere between 55 and 60 by the time I called it quits.
For the better part of six years, I wrote monthly columns about my adventures with wooden Lightning sailboats in the magazine, newsletter, whatever, a publication of the International Lightning Class Association.
Enough columns for a book.
Enough, in fact, for TWO books.
Or that was my plan last winter.
When I was invited to sail in a wooden Lightning regatta on Lake Onondaga in New York last July, my game plan changed.
I wanted to have a book to take with me to the regatta, but lack of time and some difficulties with publishing — I was going to have to re-type many of the columns, because I’ve lost the digital copies — forced me to think of a 20-column book.
I gave that some thought and realized that if I published a series of books, each with 20 columns, I’d have enough materiial for three books.
That is now my plan — to publish a three-volume set of my wooden boat columns to be titled Plug Nicke, Volume One and so on.
The books will be published by Hardalee Press.
The first volume is now available from amazon and other on-line dealers.
“Hardalee” was the name I chose for my publishing firm back in 2001 at the time I launched “Plug Nickel” the boat.
At the time, it seemed as if I’d just picked the name out of the air. It was a good sailing term: “Hard a’lee!” is what the skipper says when he or she puts the helm over to bring a sailboat about on the opposite tack by turning the bow through the eye of the wind.
In retrospect, it seems like a great choice of names. “Hard a’lee!” signifies a change of course, switching tacks, a new direction.
That is what Hardalee Press signifies to me.
All my life, it seems, I have yearned to write books.
And, of course, I yearned also to see my books in print.
After many, many attempts at securing an agent, sending manuscripts out to publishers, getting rejection after rejection, finally, my first book was published in March 2009 by Wayne State Uniiversity Press.
“Up the Rouge! Paddling Detroit’s Hidden River,” is part photo book, part adventure story and part environmental critique, a stock taking of where efforts to clean one urban river have gotten us.
The book was three years in production.
I’m 64 years old. I’ve written a lot of books. If it took three years for me to publish every one of my books, I’d have to live to 200. Maybe 300
The alternative is to start publishing them through my own company.
Hardalee Press.
So, you see, I have changed tacks. I’m gonna take charge, bring these books to market myself.
The Plug Nickel series is part of my bigger plan to publish quite a few books that I’ve written.
The subtitle of Plug Nickel is: Shoestring Boat Restoration; How I Turned an Old Fiberglass Boat Mold into a Beautiful Wooden Sailboat, and What I Learned Along the Way.
I’ll write regular updates as I make progress on this series, which I think will interest sailors everywhere.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
