It’s now Saturday evening and the NRG Conference is essentially over. I’m now just waiting for the annual banquet. This year was at San Diego and this was the first year that I was one of the featured speakers and had my own sessions at the roundtable discussions. I feel vastly under qualified, but people were very kind and many stopped me to say that they really enjoyed my talk or my discussion session.

Because boatbuilder Douglas Brooks was my presentation partner, I did benefit greatly from the association, and feel very fortunate for the opportunity. Douglas Brooks has been studying actual Japanese boatbuilding through several apprenticeships in Japan and is also an accomplished American boat builder. He’s also an excellent speaker. We gave a combined talk on Japanese wooden boatbuilding and model building, my portion being on model building. As my portion of the talk followed his, I can…