Philip C. Bolger was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1927. He became obsessed with boat design not long after. He now works in a sculpture garden of experimental boats of his imagining, still in Gloucester. His hobbies are history, prophecy, and fantasy. In the spring of 1994 he married and went into partnership with Susanne Altenburger, whose tastes and amusements are similar but not identical.