Fat Guy in a Fat Boat

As a boy, the author fell in love with the graceful sailboats he saw dancing on shimmering waters. But many years passed before he had the time and the wherewithal to buy his first sailboat—a traditional but tubby New England catboat. Fat Guy in a Fat Boat is his story of trying to tame what he thought was a ballerina of a boat that turned out to be a nautical she-devil. But in learning to sail, he was also learning life lessons. Seasoned sailors and armchair mariners will find his story at once hilarious and heart-warming.

A sailboat is as close as humankind can come to approximating the wondrous beauty of God’s creation. When we raise sail, we acknowledge that we can conjoin with the forces of nature to create an image of kinetic beauty that occupies a moment or two of time, like a shooting star or a flash of lightning—glorious and troubling together. Aboard, the sailor is hard at work to keep sail and helm perfectly poised against the wind. Observers on the shore, however, aren’t aware of the sailor's effort. They only stare in admiration as the sailboat in the distance glides gracefully through the waves, yielding happily to the wind like an alluring woman to the embrace of her lover. There is no other manmade structure that so summons us to contemplation of its beauty.

Following a career writing for publications and corporations throughout North and South America, Europe and Asia/Pacific, Peter W. Yaremko draws inspiration from the surrounding sands and seas at his homes on Cape Cod and Vieques. A veteran speechwriter for international corporate leadership, he headed communications for two blue-chip companies, founded a marketing agency now in its third decade of operation and hosts two B&Bs. He has taught writing classes and is author and publisher of fiction and non-fiction books under the Pamet River Books imprint. He declares himself a diligent blogger, gracious innkeeper, enthusiastic sailor, avid snorkeler and eager cyclist.