By the time he was ten, JOHN BROOKS had learned how to sail and make boat models from his grandfather. Five years later, John joined his grandparents and other family members on a trip from the Pacific Northwest to South Africa. After 32,000 miles of sailing, John decided that he preferred working on boats to traveling. After studying engineering and journalism in college, he took his first job building fishing boats in Washington State. Within a year, he was building himself a skipjack and studying yacht design by mail. John moved to Maine in 1982, working for a number of Mount Desert Island yards over the years, and kept things interesting by also working for a keyboard maker, a cabinetmaker, and a custom furniture builder. John built his first glued-lapstrake boat, to his own design, in 1984 and fell in love with the method. He and his wife, Ruth Ann Hill, started their own business designing and building glued-lapstrake boats in 1991. Ruth is a writer, naturalist, and illustrator, and together they wrote How to Build Glued- Lapstrake Wooden Boats, published by WoodenBoat Books. They moved to Brooklin in 2003, and John worked for noted builders Doug Hylan and Brooklin Boat Yard until last year. He and his wife are again working together running Brooks Boats Designs. They live in Brooklin with their three children, Leigh, Tie, and Jack.