Peter Fish May 25, 2021Updated: May 25, 2021, 7:42 pm
Pete Mulvihill and Bonnie Tsui in Tomales Bay. Photo: Craig Popelars
It’s 5,300 miles from San Francisco’s South End Rowing Club to Suffolk, England. But it was at the Rowing Club that Pete Mulvihill, co-owner of San Francisco’s Green Apple Books and intrepid open-water swimmer, first heard about Suffolk author Roger Deakin’s cult aquatic classic, “Waterlog.”
“I went online and bought a copy from a British dealer,” recalls Mulvihill, “because it had never been published here.” He read “Waterlog.” He liked it. A few weeks later he was on a phone call with Craig Popelars, publisher at Tin House books in Portland, Ore., and a fellow swimmer. Read “Waterlog,” Mulvihill advised. Popelars did. He passed the book on to others at Tin House. “And,” Popelars says, “we just fell in love with it.”