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Displaying items by tag: Martin Black

#Award - Martin Black, author of Limerick publisher Peggy Bawn Press's GL Watson – The Art and Science of Yacht Design, was presented with the John Leather Award for Special Achievement at the recent Classic Boat Awards 2014 event in Mayfair, London.

It marks the first time this prestigious award has been presented for something not directly related to hands-on traditional boat work.

And it's a fitting tribute to Black for his meticulously researched book, reviewed here by WM Nixon.

The publication was crafted with care over many years and brought to the bookshelf by a team gathered by Peggy Bawn Press owner Hal Sisk, not to mention beautifully presented by Gary Mac Mahon’s Limerick-based Copper Reed Studio.

This award is also a fitting tribute to John Leather – naval architect, author and prolific contributor to Classic Boat from its inception until his death in 2006.

As John’s widow, Doris, said in a moving tribute by Classic Boat editor Dan Houston: “Books were John’s passion... I think every time I went out another boxload would arrive! But he’d say: ‘I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, books are my vice!’”

Published in Book Review

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.