How To Build A Boat: A Father, his Daughter, and the Unsailed Sea

‘The passages he addresses directly to Phoebe are as tender as the father-daughter letters in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Seasons Quartet’ Times Literary Supplement

‘This book tells the inspiring story of how even the least skilled of us can make something wonderful if we invest enough time and love’ The Daily Mail

'Both the book, and place, are magical' The Sunday Telegraph

'When Jonathan Gornall decided to build a boat for his daughter, he had no experience and no practical skills. What followed was a very real labour of love.' The Scotsman


One man learns the ancient skills of boat-building to connect with fatherhood.


How to Build a Boat is the story of a thoroughly unskilled modern man who, inspired by his love of the sea and what it has taught him about life, sets out to build a traditional wooden boat as a gift for his newborn daughter. It is, he recognises, a ridiculously quixotic challenge for a man who, with a family and mortgage to support, knows little about woodworking and even less about boat-building. He isn’t even sure what type of boat he should build, what type of wood he should use, the tools he will need or, come to that, where on earth he will build it. He has much to consider, and even more to learn.

But, undaunted by his ignorance, he embarks on a voyage of rediscovery, determined to navigate his way back to a time when a man could fashion his future and leave his mark on history using only time-honoured skills and the ancient tools and materials at hand. The journey begins with a search for clues in the once bustling, but now still, creeks and backwaters of his beloved Suffolk, where men once fashioned the might of Nelson’s navy from the great oaks that shadowed the water’s edge. If all goes to plan, it will end with a great little adventure, as father and daughter cast off together for a voyage of discovery that neither will forget, and both will treasure until the end of their days.

A writer following in the bestselling footsteps of Adam Nicolson, Tim Moore and Charlie Connelly – discovering what make modern man tick through the discovery of a craft long forgotten.