HISTORY

Waterway Guide paces post-war

rise of recreational boating

By Bob Cerullo

In the Age of Sail a ship's colors or flags were a principal means of communication at sea. It was during a fierce battle between the American Bohomme Richard and the British HMS Serapis that Captain John Paul Jones declared, " I have not yet begun to fight." Less well known is the fact that Jones was responding personally to the enemy captain, who had hollered over the din of battle, asking Jones: "Have you struck?"

Striking the colors was the traditional sign of defeat. During the same battle the British ship's own colors had been shot away prompting her captain to nail them to the mast lest anyone think he had surrendered.

Anyone who has been courageous enough to embark on the creation of a new publication will attest to the fact that it is indeed a battle to keep the colors flying. In the case of Waterway Guide, the first shot was fired in1948 when a 200-page Guide was printed by Marina Publishing House in Wilmington, N.C., describing places to stop along the way from New York to Florida.

The early Waterway Guide provided the standard marina and town details but it also provided detailed information regarding the liquor laws in every state along the way and a "Guest Log of the Watch" with spaces for the guests' names, summer and winter addresses, favorite foods drinks and diversions

By 1952 there were Northern and Southern editions with black and white fold out charts and aerial photos. It evolved to a respected publication that was, by 1962, awarding its coveted Bronze Plaques and Certificates of Merit to marinas voted as best-all around.
Enter the Wains

In 1969, at the suggestion of the renowned outdoor writer Jim Emmett, the rights to the name were purchased by a liveaboard cruising couple from New York who were savvy in the world of public relations and publishing. Estelle and Sidney Wain are boaters who loved to cruise the Intracoastal Waterway. Boat builders were just gearing up to meet the growing interest in pleasure boats. "Yachting," as it was known at that time, was still very much the province of the wealthy.

The Wains were serious boaters. In 1964 they had already been sailing for twenty years and decided they wanted a unique new boat. They worked with Naval Architects John G. Alden & Co. Inc to come up with their dream boat.

The Distant Star was a 57-foot ocean going diesel cruiser built at the Historic Hodgdon Brothers Shipyard in East Boothbay, Maine. The Wains wanted a boat on which they could eventually live with all the comforts of home. Those comforts included a tile fireplace brought from Scotland. It burned wood, coal or charcoal.

The Wains recognized the growing need for boaters to have a reliable guide that would provide detailed and updated information about all of the stops all along the way between New York City and Miami Florida. Their target reader was the year-round cruising yachtsmen who plied the ICW. The Wains had first-hand experience and they wanted to make the knowledge easily available to fellow boaters.

In no time they were publishing the Guide from their headquarters in a house trailer. "We thought of the Waterway Guide as a retirement project we could do in our spare time but, it soon grew to a major enterprise employing 60 people," Estelle Wain said.

Word soon spread that boaters traveling the ICW no longer had to rely on word-of-mouth for information about marinas. At the flip of a page, they could quickly learn all there was to know about a particular marina in a particular town. Word was also spreading to advertisers and before long the pages of Waterway Guide carried ads from boat builders like Chris-Craft and Hatteras.

Post-war phenomenon
After World War 2, the nature of boating had been transformed from a leisure time activity for the very wealthy to a sport that could be enjoyed by just about anyone. Wooden boats gave way to fiberglass boats that were mass produced and affordable for middle-class wage-earners.

The new breed of boater included many who were used to taking car trips on long weekends and vacations at distant places. They were eager to discover new places they could travel to by boat, and Waterway Guide provided the information they needed to plan and make a trip in strange waters.

Producing the Waterway Guide is a unique series of challenges which needed to be conquered along the way and with each edition. It took some very smart, dedicated and interesting people to bring Waterway Guide to where it is today. A good example is Ken Steele. Steele started as art director in 1971 helping to craft the each edition for the next 30 years. He is now retired and spends half the year in North Carolina and the other half in West Palm Beach Florida.

Steele is a boater. He and his wife Gloria at one time lived on their 70-foot Consolidated and later on their 65-foot Burger. Steele battled at Waterway Guide through a succession of owners and editors. He chuckled as he recalled one early editor that knew very little about boats and asked some of the dumbest questions. Steele worked at just about every aspect of the early Waterway Guides from art department, to sales and eventually to general manager. Going to boat shows was a glorious experience, he recalled, because in those days he and his wife went by train.

Steele also spoke fondly of working with editors at Waterway Guide that went on to great things. Cynthia Taylor, for one, became editor of Yachting Magazine. Steele also recalled working with Jim Emmett, who built his own boat and was a well known character on the ICW; he wrote articles for magazines like Yachting and Outdoor World.

Cronkite comes aboard
Steel enjoyed working and sailing with the legendary television anchorman and avid sailor Walter Cronkite, who exercised his muse in the preface to each Guide. Referring to the purchase of Waterway Guide by Whitney Communications Corporation, Cronkite wrote:

"It seemed a logical extension of [Whitney's] interest and expertise in boating to acquire Waterway Guide, already by far the finest publication in its field, with an unusually excellent staff." It was first of 18 prefaces "the most trusted man in America" would write for the Guide.

Cronkite, who had been a long-time ocean-racing sailor, truly enjoyed slowing down and smelling the roses along the ICW. In 1983, he wrote about those all too common passages in which a stubborn captain's drive to get to his destination despite weather or sea conditions makes everyone aboard swear they'll never get on his boat again.

"The answer is simple and known to everyone," Cronkite explained, "but it takes will power to recognize and act upon it: To plan our trips with shorter passages and more stops, allowing more time to take comfortable tacks, to arrive dry and friendly, and also to see even more of the fascinating ports that line all our shores."

Doziers' deepening involvement
In 1975, a perky go-getting sales representative named Craig Dozier, joined the Guide and started breaking advertising sales records. It didn't hurt that she and her husband Jack were avid boaters very much like Estelle and Sidney Wain. Jack Dozier had been using Waterway Guides since the 1950s when he cruised on his father's boat. Over the years the Doziers logged more than 100,000 miles on ICW trips, many with their two dogs, Molly and Scooter.

Primedia, the largest special-interest magazine publisher in the Southeast, bought Waterway Guide in 1998 and moved its offices to Atlanta. A few years later Primedia decided to sell the book. In hindsight it seems natural that Waterway Guide's best salesperson and her marina-owning husband should take over the business. That happened in 2002.

"I was once, very briefly, a stockbroker, and then I decided to get back on the water where my real interests lie," said Jack Dozier, who recently celebrated his 60th birthday. "I've been in the marina business for years. I now have two on Virginia's Northern Neck, in Urbanna and Deltaville, and am involved in other marine-related ventures, including a boat brokerage and repair and restoration business. It's been challenging, of course, but mostly it's been a great deal of fun. Most enjoyable are all the boaters we have met over the years-the people who regularly cruise the ICW and know what they need in a guide. Craig and I wanted to give it to them.

Home to Annapolis
"When we bought Waterway Guide, we moved the operations to Annapolis to be on the water and to have access to people who understood the specialized nature of our guides," he said. "We took only the name, and hired a completely new staff, bought new hardware, software, redesigned the layout and added a new Great Lakes guide, digitized the books, and expanded the page count over the following three years from 380 to over 500 on average."

Waterway Guide's sales, as well, have gone up each year since the Doziers bought the company. As Ken Steel said, "What could be a better testimonial that to have the fact that the publishers were actually advertisers long before they owned the Guide."

The Doziers have made many alterations to the Guides, including spiral binding to allow them to lay flat on the helm station, heavier paper stock and detailed navigational information geographically organized for quick and easy reference. New color-coding allows boaters to find their cruising areas quickly. Perhaps the most popular change was adding an inside back flap.

"[It] not only folds over to keep the pages clean and dry, but also has printed on it select ICW bridges and waypoints...This makes for super easy access to bridge information you will need while cruising up and down the ICW, without having to read the fine print on the chart," Milt Baker, founder of Bluewater Books and Charts, wrote in a recent review.

It has taken 60 years, and a lot of hard work by some very dedicated people along the way, but today's Waterway Guide comes very close to meeting the publication's initial goal to reveal "All About All the Stops All Along the Way." Every year Waterway Guide publishes four updated editions, which between them cover almost the entire eastern half of the American continent. The Doziers also launched the biannual Waterway Guide Magazine and recently expanded the company's website to create a clearinghouse of timely information for boaters, marine businesses and policymakers.

What would cruising be like without Waterway Guide? Countless boaters can be grateful for people like Jim Emmett, Cynthia Taylor, Ken Steele and Estelle and Sidney Wain, who had the courage to persevere in what was, at times, a very risky battle indeed. Today's challenge, as Jack and Craig Dozier will testify, is to ensure that the Guide keeps pace with rapidly evolving information technology. Their committment to meet the challenge is proof that those Waterway Guide colors are still nailed to the mast.

 (Capt. Bolb Cerullo and whis wife, Marilynne, live on Jackson Creek in Deltaville, VA, and cruise their 46 Bertram Cabin Cruiser Patrick Sweeney. A certified master mechanic, he has had his own radio and TV shows and currently writes for several automotive and marine publications. He authored the book "What's Wrong With My Car.")