February 2004
John E. Conway profile
Phone interview 1/31/04
- by Carol Standish
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   Catboat Summers

John E. Conway Catboat Summers is an engaging account by John Conway of his family�s favorite activity�messing about in boats on Buzzards Bay. Although it is Conway�s first published book, it is full of crisp description, lot�s of humorous, credible dialog and stories that flow at a gripping pace unusual in a memoir. It is clear that he is no stranger to good writing. �I don�t think Stephen King has anything to worry about,� he replied when I asked him how he learned to write so well. He went on to confess that he was a ham and had cultivated a talent for making light of most subjects, including himself.

As for his writing talent, it turns out that he�s been writing since his teens, paying his way through college writing and taking photographs for magazines. After he graduated with a dual major, journalism and electrical engineering, he went to work writing articles on engineering for a trade journal publishing house. Today, he has �about the most fun job on the planet� working for a major sports marketing and management firm. Conway is part of the digital aspect of the company. �We manage 3200 websites out of Boston and figure out how to leverage new [electronic] �toys� into the existing technology, thinking two to three years out. My mission is to tinker, experiment and watch the reaction.�

And the obvious case of boat fever? That sweet malady was planted by his father who presented 10 year old Conway (and his two younger brothers) with an 8-foot pram. Summering on Cape Cod, �We could pull the boats right up out of the water onto the lawn.� Later as a teen growing up in Milton, Massachusetts he took the subway to the Community Sailing Center on the Charles River where he learned to sail. �I can�t say enough good about it. Being in the city between two bridges conditions change constantly but they use very forgiving boats,� he recalls.

Today, the Conway summer home on Buzzards Bay is the base of all the boating action in Catboat Summers. �It�s Tom Sawyer land, you�re barefoot all summer, you�ve got the river, the ocean, (consistently above 70 degrees�a barely credible fact to a Mainer), the beach, the woods and acres pastures full of dairy cows. It�s a place that time forgot.�

Even as teens, his children were always eager to spend their summers there. �There was a good sprinkling of kids to start with and then we convinced other families to come so we had parallel universes, summer friends and winter friends.� The cockpit of �old bucket� as Conway fondly calls his boat has been known to accommodate 17 people, safely at one time. �Of course, some of those people were pretty tiny.�

What do the Conway kids think of Dad�s book? �When it first came out I got a real ear-full. They think I portray them as geeks. �Daa-ad, you make me look like a complete jerk!� but they haven�t disowned me yet. I told them it was an opportunity to take a shot at the old man. I encourage them to write.� It seems a dubious prospect, though, to expect a �Conway Kids Rebuttal� anytime soon. In fact when Conway gears up to publish a tale (some of the book�s chapters have appeared separately in various boating magazines) the kids contribute, refreshing his memory �you forgot the best part� and embellishing the information from the boat�s log, the skeletal source of the stories. They also help choose pictures. �I always have a camera with me, it�s an old habit. So we have too many photographs of almost everything we�ve ever done.�

It�s no surprise that the children became �boat nuts� themselves. Grown now, the two oldest, Abby and Ned love sailing but Caroline prefers a motor boat. �She likes to pick a destination and go there, no fooling around,� says Conway. His wife Christine is of a similar mind. �She�ll come along [on the sailboat] when there is a fixed destination, which preferably includes a nice restaurant and maybe even a B & B.�

Conway says he doesn�t see a larger boat in his future.� I think this is it, unless she falls apart on us. She is old, which is why we stay close to shore and have plenty of life jackets. She�s just the right size and I have way less guilt...I do intend to cruise longer and farther but I know enough characters [with larger, off-shore boats] to have the experience without owning one...my planned technique is �mooching�.�

In fact, Conway�s advice to anyone interested in boating is �to find somebody who owns a boat and �mooch� your way into his/her life.�

And finally, yes, we can expect a sequel. �but the �further� adventures will be different�because the characters are all adults now. I�m also thinking about a volume of �around the campfire� or �cockpit� stories, scary or mysterious. The most feedback I�ve received from my book has been about the chapter where I�m sure I see ghost ships.�

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