NONFICTION - Dec. 22, 1991

SMALL CRAFT ADVISORY: A Book About the Building of a Boat by Louis D. Rubin Jr. (Atlantic Monthly Press: $21.95; 394 pp.). In “The Wind and the Willows,” Water Rat tells Mole, new to the riverside, that “There is nothing--absolutely nothing --half so much worth doing as simply messing around in boats.” Louis Rubin, founder of the literary publishing house Algonquin Books in North Carolina, apparently agrees, for he has spent many hours messing around in boats despite the fact that they have given him no end of trouble. “Small Craft Advisory” is nominally about the Algonquin , the small workboat Rubin had built to his personal specifications, but much of the book is devoted to stories concerning the author’s previous, very unreliable powerboats. Engines, transmissions, rudders, props, gaskets--although everything seems to have failed on Rubin’s vessels at one time or another, he is rarely without one, always wanting the sense of freedom, of distant horizons, that a boat brings. “Small Craft Advisory” provides no new insight on the lure of sail-less ships, but it’s a most effective antidote to cabin fever.