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How Boat Things Work, by Charlie Wing. (Picked it up at the Toronto Boat Show last weekend.) Mostly you should have it on your shelf if your boat has a Yanmar diesel, because it has a fantastic description of all the main components and how they work. (My boat actually has an A-4, but I still found the Yanmar info to be really informative.) The rest of the book has a combination of basic and not-so-basic stuff, all useful, well-illustrated and clearly written.
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/search?index=books&linkCode=qs&keywords=0071377549 if you want to check it out.
My question is, what are the books you have found to be indispensable and/or just really good boat reading?
Admin, could the site have a recommended reading list?
Cheers
Richard Bingham
Peregrine
553/Mk III 1976
Toronto
Richard Bingham
Peregrine
553/Mk III 1976
Toronto
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Yes, you just started it. If it seems to be of interest, it may get a page in the main body - remember I said may, not will.
Bear in mind that this site is predominantly historical and technical - there are lots of places to discuss destinations, experiences and so on, so let's take the various Napoleonic War series, including Aubrey/Maturin, Hornblower, Ramage and Bolitho, as added and move on, sticking to the helpful or truly historical.
Nigel Calder's Boatowner's Mechanical and Electrical Manual: How to Maintain, Repair, and Improve Your Boat's Essential Systems is stuffed with far more than most of us need to know. It's the sort of book you keep on your shelf, reading as needed, rather than reading for itself.
Peter Kemp's The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea (which seems to have been updated finally by a new author) is a very useful reference when thinking and reading about things nautical. If you're reading one of the series mentioned above, and someone is described as climbing the futtock-shrouds, this will tell you what he is up to, as well as many useful bits of present-day information about nautical technology.
If you can find a copy, Steve Killing and Doug Hunter's [url=http://www.amazon.ca/gp/offer-listing/039304646X/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new&qid=1358703638&sr=1-9">Yacht Design Explained[/url] is, as I have said previously, a fantastic entrée to understanding why boats are shaped as they are. The stupidity of letting this book go out of print is shown by the stupendous prices asked on Amazon. Easy to understand but not simplistic, it really expanded my understanding of the art. Killing is an ex-C&C designer who has become one of the unseen hands behind the America's Cup's interest in wing sails (boats of his design have won the last two C Class regattas, which used to be known as the Little America's Cup until the lawyers stepped in), and Doug Hunter is the owner of C&C27 Diva.
- Admin
Last edited by (2013-01-20 05:44:05)
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Thanks, Admin. For the record, Steve and I did wrest the rights back for the book from WW Norton after they declined to print any more. Neither of us have had a spare moment to do the updating we'd want to in order to bring it out in a second edition. Maybe that'll happen after Steve finishes up with the NZ America's Cup challenge he's now working for and I finish with this reckless pursuit of a PhD.
Personally, I think the book should become an app...Or a board game...
Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
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$1,076 for a used copy???
For a flat $1,000 I'll come to your house and read it to you.
Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
Offline
Doug -- Looks like a terrific book, judging by the page excerpts on Amazon. If you have re-acquired the rights, you might want to consider re-purposing it as an e-book and selling it yourself on Amazon. (Look up Kindle Direct publishing, or check out calibre-ebook.com.) Much faster than traditional publishing, you retain all the control (price, updates) and almost certainly more lucrative than any publisher's re-print deal would be for you. And all of us who would like a copy could get one sooner, for much less than the current going price. <img src="emoticons/icon_exclaim.gif"> The only downside is here's no paper edition -- though you could also do special-edition one-off reprints through a short-run printer like Lulu.com if somebody really had to have a book.
cheers
Richard Bingham
Peregrine
553/Mk III 1976
Toronto
Richard Bingham
Peregrine
553/Mk III 1976
Toronto
Offline
Thanks for the encouragement. I have reacquired the rights for a couple books from my back catalogue and have been looking at reissue options for them that would include a combo of ebook and print-on-demand. Yacht Design Explained is a special case for Steve and me, as we really did want to update it in some fashion. (Nothing in it is wrong, but since 1998 there have been a number of developments in design, some of which Steve has been at leading edge of). We've simply had no time to do the illustration work required as well as to repaginate etc. Steve and I wrote and illustrated this book together and I did the design and page assembly.
I do think we'll probably issue it strictly as an electronic text with images. But not much is going to happen until steve is done with the latest America's Cup and we're both on the same continent.
thanks
Doug
Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
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Geez, for $1000 I might let my copy go to finance my sailing!
YDE was one of those books I first saw at Chapters. It kept calling to me and I bought it online about a decade ago. It's awesome and relatively up to date -- no, it doesn't talk much about sportboats and chines but most of the other design books I have talk about 6 metres with attached rudders as being modern. It's an awesome book, Doug -- it remains a touchstone for me.
For pure design approach and fundamentals there's "Skeene's Elements of Yacht Design". An updated version of that is "Principles of Yacht Design" by Lars Larsson and Rolf Eliasson. More modern with good working examples. I also have Ted Brewer's book "Understanding Boat Design" but it's older, and not as comprehensive. Bob Perry's book "Yacht Design According to Perry" is very interesting as well, partly because it's peppered with fun stories. (Bob is pretty accessible over at SA, which makes the book and the stories even more "real" for me.) I have one or two more but these are the best design books.
The rest of my library is racing and trim books. Ottawa Public Library has most of the Stuart Walker books on trim and tactics. Dry as toast but the man is smart and has won a lot of regattas, so worthwhile trying to read them. One of my favourites (which I bought and gave to my crew, including Bjarki if he's reading this -- you better be reading it and getting ready for spring, buddy!) is "Getting Started in Sailboat Racing" by Adam Cort and Richard Stearns. I also have Gary Jobson's Championship Sailing (he has written a number of racing books -- this one is a little preachy here and there, but not bad overall).
I also have the "The New Book of Sail Trim" which is full of SAIL magazine articles, a few of which have been helpful.
There ya go. My library, for what it's worth!
Chuck Lanning
NSC, Ottawa
[Given this opening, I cannot resist relating a Stuart Walker anecdote from a talk he gave at our club. According to Walker, he was sailing in a Type 42 moderately assymetric oscillating breeze, slightly modified by a Type "C" shoreline rising with an increasing gradient to the land and a ploughed field to leeward of the right side of the course. Slight complications were introduced by the presence of a small cumulo-nimbus cloud over the rhumb line and a tractor in the field, but it was as clear as day that the right side was the logical choice (I am fudging this, of course, but fans of Dr. Walker will recognize the drift).
Nevertheless, Buddy Melges took the left side of the last beat to cross half-a-dozen boatlengths, to win the race and series. Walker approached him after the race and asked why, in the presence of a Type 42 moderately assymetric oscillating breeze, etc., he had overridden the clear signal for the right and gone up the left.
Buddy shrugged, transferred a stalk of grass to the other side of his mouth and said, "Dunno. Guess it felt better." You could see the steam coming out of Walker's ears as he remembered the moment, but he shrugged and said something that, while mildly disparaging of his own total reliance on logic, also suggested that in an ideal world, logic would rule absolutely and people like Buddy would be back home digging potatoes. - Admin]
Last edited by (2013-01-24 06:59:41)
Chuck Lanning
C&C 27 Mk V, Chivas & Champagne
NSC, Ottawa
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Bang-on.
Word of warning: don't approach a Stuart Walker book without a glass of scotch.
Seriously, there should be warning labels on those books.
If you can get through it, though, he's forgotten far more than most of us will ever know about sailing.
Cheers,
Chuck Lanning
NSC, Ottawa
Last edited by (2013-01-27 23:45:51)
Chuck Lanning
C&C 27 Mk V, Chivas & Champagne
NSC, Ottawa
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I recall years ago someone writing a parody column by Dr. Walker, who was renamed Dr. Talker. It recounted some race in which he prattled on with indecision worthy of Hamlet in every tactical situation, and some hapless crew continually yelling, "Tack now, Dr. Talker!"
Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
Doug Hunter
Diva
C&C 27 Mk1
Midland Bay Sailing Club
www.douglashunter.ca
Offline
Suggest we add a fiction section. Recommend "Shipkiller" by Justin Scott (I think) and "Ghosting" by Dan Poyer.
Ken Pole, Ottawa
1975 Mark III Santiva
Ken Pole, Ottawa
1975 Mark III Santiva
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The Shipping News has always been a favourite of mine, Ken -- but it took the second read to really get all the dark undertones. Well written in any case.
I'll be checking the books on the shelf at the cottage this spring. Let you know if I see anything interesting!
Cheers
Chuck Lanning
NSC, Ottawa
Chuck Lanning
C&C 27 Mk V, Chivas & Champagne
NSC, Ottawa
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Confused. I inadvertently identified the author of "Ghosting" as Dan Poyer. It should've been David Poyer. Dan Lenson is the principal character in a series of US Navy-centric novels which Poyer continues to develop. And, for what it's worth, as a diver, I really enjoyed his four novels about a roguish commercial diver, Tiller Galloway; having dived inland blue holes on Andros, I really related to "Down to a Sunless Sea". Keep the suggestions coming. Ninety-five days to launch up here!
Ken Pole, Ottawa
1975 Mark III Santiva
Ken Pole, Ottawa
1975 Mark III Santiva
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Moby-Dick. Many people are frightened of the book because it is long and complex. Some of that complexity is the nautical component, which most people find perplexing or just boring, but sailors will enjoy. Read it in the Norton Critical Edition, whose copious footnotes explain the complex allusions and the whaling methods that are lost on most of us.
If you enjoy Moby-Dick, try In the Heart of the Sea, by Nathaniel Philbrick, which recounts the story of the whaler Essex, sunk by an enraged whale, and the survival of a few of her crew by cannibalism. Sounds lurid, but it provides more illumination of the life of sailors and their home-ports.
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
David Weatherston
Towser, Toronto
C&C 27 Mk IV
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Oh, yeah -- don't forget "The Godforsaken Sea" by Derek Lundy. I also liked "The Longest Race" by Hal Roth, about the first BOC Challenge in about 1982 (predates the Vendée Globe). Also, try this: Francis Chichester (1967). "Gipsy Moth Circles the World".
Cheers
Chuck Lanning
NSC, Ottawa
Chuck Lanning
C&C 27 Mk V, Chivas & Champagne
NSC, Ottawa
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I would add Derek Lundy's The Way of a Ship, which wraps a neat narrative around how a square-rigger functioned; and also Cape Horn: The Logical Route by Bernard Moitessier, which is an incredible adventure story and really interesting in light of Moitessier's eventual fate. And I agree with David about Moby-Dick; terrific book, but how a non-sailor could get through it is beyond me.
cheers
Richard Bingham
Peregrine
553/Mk III 1976
Toronto
Richard Bingham
Peregrine
553/Mk III 1976
Toronto
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