Boating Books - Page 5

Ultrasimple Boat Building

Gavin Atkin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Ultrasimple Boatbuilding Review 5 out of 5 stars.
12 of 12 people found this review helpful.

This book belongs on the shelf of anyone who is contemplating building their own boat. This book was a special treat for me because there is a picture of a boat I built in it.
The prospect of building a boat can be very overwhelming. It is a process of figuring out your needs and then deciding on an appropriate design. This is followed by determining if you have the tools, money, space, skill, and time to see a project go from a pile of wood to a pleasant afternoon sailing on a local lake with your family. If you are like me you begin this process by reading as much as you possibly can prior to actually creating sawdust.
Gavin Atkin's book is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the "how" to build a boat. Although you may supplement this information with additional material from other sources, Atkin gives enough practical information to actually build a boat. Atkin makes building a boat for someone who has never done it seem very doable, even fun. The second part of the book is filled with designs to whet the appetite of anyone who
is in the process of trying to decide what would would be the right boat for them. Mr. Atkin includes complete plans for seventeen of his own designs, all very doable, plus he reviews designs done by other popular designers.
My boat recently succumbed to dry rot and was hauled to the dump. I am now in the process of deciding which is the "right" boat to build and Gavin Atkin's book, "Ultrasimple Boatbuilding", has renewed my interest in building my own boat again.

Editorial Review:

The first complete how-to guide for building the latest generation of quick and easy boats

In Ultrasimple Boatbuilding, renowned designer Gavin Atkin shows you how to create elegant, seaworthy plywood boats with a minimum of time, experience, and expense. Using clearly written and illustrated step-by-step instructions, Atkin explains the basics of stitch-and-glue construction, tools, materials, shop safety, and more, as he helps you choose and build the simple boat of your dreams.

The Fiberglass Boat Repair Manual

Allan H. Viatses, Allan H. Vaitses

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"This book will save you money and grief before you can say woven roving."--Sailing

"A comprehensive and accurate work that should benefit almost any owner of a fiberglass boat."--SAIL

"This book will prove a valuable addition to the library of any boat builder or owner who is seriously interested in doing his own repairs, as well as intercepting minor problems before they become major projects."--Boatbuilder

Are there hairline cracks in your boat's deck or topsides gelcoat? Have her color and luster faded over the years? Does she have deck leaks? Has she been holed? Is her hull oilcanning in a sea? If your answer to any of these questions is yes, this book is for you. This is the definitive guide for fiberglass boat repair and beautification, covering not just cosmetic dings and scratches, but also major repairs of structural damage to hull and decks. It will show you how to:

• replace deteriorated gelcoat, or repair the flaws in an existing gelcoat and recoat it with polyurethane or marine alkyd enamel paint;
• strengthen a weak and overly flexible hull or deck;
• tab in loose hull liners and joinerwork;
• make templates from the good side of a hull to reshape large shattered or missing areas on the other side;
• repair or replace water-saturated deck cores;
• repair keels, rudders, and centerboards;
• rebed and refasten underwater and on-deck hardware;
• rebed, refasten, and strengthen hull-to-deck joints;
• fix broken hatches, and make new ones when necessary;
• treat the symptoms and causes of overstressed hulls.

That beautiful craft swinging at anchor or nestled dockside, her topsides reflecting water and sky like a polished mirror, could be yours. Here's how.

Wanderer

Sterling Hayden

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

beauty and horror of the sea, reflecting a man's life 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Hayden was one of those force of nature types who, sadly don't exist in sufficient quantities to make the world a really interesting place. In this book, he tells his life story, while telling the story of his last voyage on the 100 foot schooner, Wanderer. His prose is lovely and has the rythm of the sea; like other great works of sea literature (like Moby Dick). I'll give a high point of his prose before I complain:

"What does a man need ---really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in --and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That's all --in the material sense. And we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade. The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed. Where then lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be, bankruptcy of purse of bankrutpcy of life?"

Hayden was a child of the depression who worked his way out of bad circumstances by a combination of stubbornness, physique and leadership skill. He is eventually given a job a an actor, after being spotted by the media during a sailboat race in Glocester. He abandons this due to a love affair with an actress who fancies herself concerned with serious social issues. He joins the war and does OSS/CIA type operations in maritime support of partisans in Yugoslavia. He returns to his acting. Makes many movies. Marries an evil shrew. Divorces. Gets the kids. Chucks it all for a trip to Tahiti in his 100 foot yacht. All this is well and good, but the man reveals too much about himself. His self loathing isn't interesting. It is certainly not edifying, and though he seems to abundantly pity himself, I cannot feel sorry for him. The man had many fine opportunities. He had fine charachter qualities; I admire the fact that he chucked it all, just because he didn't like it. But he was not a fine man: he was petty and ugly -he couldn't even treat his own widowed mother decently, and though his ex wife was probably no better, I rather doubt as being around such a tormented spirit was good for his kids. In that way, he is a tragic figure; all the more tragic because he doesn't seem to realize it himself. It is no suprise he never did much with himself after he wrote the book. I don't know this to be true, but I suspect he drown himself and his self-loathing in booze.

Still, it is a beautifully written book. In a way, the book is his triumph over it all. It is doubtless a finer thing than any of the movies he made, and his great "the heck with it all" dramatic gesture is probably better than any he made on camera. I know I will read the book again. Perhaps when I am older I will think differently of Captain Hayden. Amusingly, a visit to Sausalito revealed that I had known Hayden as the demented General Jack D. Ripper in "Dr. Strangelove."

Editorial Review:

Since its publication in 1963 Sterling Hayden's autobiography, Wanderer, has been surrounded by controversy. The author was at the peak of his earning power as a movie star when he suddenly quit. He walked out on Hollywood, walked out of a shattered marriage, defied the courts, and, broke and an outlaw, set sail with his four children in the schooner Wanderer-bound for the South Seas.

His attempt to escape launches this autobiography. It is the candid, sometimes painfully revealing confession of a man who scrutinized his every self-defeat and self-betrayal in the unblinking light of conscience. It is also the triumph of a complex and contradictory man, a rebel and a seeker, undefeated by his failure to find himself in love, adventure, drink, or escape to the South Seas.

The Sextant Handbook

Bruce Bauer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Loran and GPS notwithstanding, there will always be a place for the sextant aboard any blue-water boat, if for no other reason than the thrill and mystery of finding one's position on earth by gazing at the heavens. Here is the indispensable reference that should accompany the instrument aboard. Cmdr. Bruce Bauer, a professional navigator and master mariner with the U.S. Merchant Marine, has distilled years of hands-on experience into an eminently readable guide to buying, adjusting, using, and repairing sextants.

The Sextant Handbook is dedicated to the premise that electronic navigation devices, while too convenient to disregard, are too vulnerable to rely on exclusively. The book is designed to make beginner and expert alike conversant with this most beautiful and functional of the navigator's tools. Topics include:

• Assembly and Disassembly
• Vital Adjustments
• Avoiding Problems
• Rough Weather Sightings
• Oiling and Cleaning
• Immersion Baths
• Emergency Silvering
• Finding and Buying Used Sextants
• And Much More

You'll also find a list of distributors, manufacturers, and dealers worldwide, a discussion of future trends, and numerous helpful hints, including sighting with eyeglasses and using a Rude starfinder. All in a thoroughly revised edition of a book acclaimed by navigation professionals.

Wind and Water: Boating Photographs From Around The World

Onne van der Wal

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This dazzling book of photographs of sailboat cruising and racing by the premier sailing photographer and award-winner, Onne van der Wal. Onne van der Wal is a world-class maritime photographer whose original body of work is recognized and coveted by boat lovers worldwide. WIND AND WATER features a variety of photographs that will captivate everyone from the casual boating enthusiast to the experienced Grand Prix racer. What sets van der Wal's work apart from the rest is its artistic style: whether he climbs atop a 75-foot mast for a bird's-eye view of a sloop cutting through crystal-blue waters or crouches on the deck during a race for a brisk action shot, van der Wal delivers brilliant photographs that capture the harmonious experience of being on the water. The book contains exhilarating shots of intense yacht racing all over the world, from the America's Cup to the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta. It also features dramatic photographs of sailboats cruising in exotic destinations such as the Southern Ocean (between Cape Town and New Zealand), the South Pacific, and the Arctic.

Nights of Ice: True Stories of Disaster and Survival on Alaska's High Seas

Spike Walker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

entertaining subject--marginal writing 3 out of 5 stars.
7 of 12 people found this review helpful.

I read this on a trip to Alaska, so I got into it's "spirit" on location. The stories are quite entertaining, but when writers make junior-varsity comments and mistakes, it makes me wonder about the veracity of the actual stories:
1) Does everyone see their entire lives flash before their eyes when they are near death?
2) Some guy's one-year old child asks him if he is Santa Claus upon his return from an ordeal at sea. Clearly Spike has never spent time with a one-year old; not only can very few of them speak more than a word or two, but this one is so eloquent and knowledgeable that he thinks the old man is Kris himself!
3) The helicopter pilot makes it to a "small village airport" just before running out of fuel (which means it must have been between 5-10 minutes from the rescue locale since they only had 30 minutes of fuel left before the rescue attempt(hmmmm), but somehow a C-130 can get in and out of there to send them home while the chopper gets an inspection (hmmm hmmmm).
I'll leave it at that...

Editorial Review:

Spike Walker has spent more than a decade fishing in the subzero hell of Alaska's coastal waters. This collection--coming on the heels of his classic memoir Working on the Edge--is a testament to the courage of those who brave nature's wrath each fishing season, and to the uncontrolled power of nature herself.. The crewmen in Nights of Ice face a constant onslaught of roaring waves, stories-high swells, and life-stealing ice. Tested by the elements, these seamen battle for their vessels and their lives, on every page evincing a level of courage and a will to live seldom found elsewhere in modern society.

The Strip-Built Sea Kayak: Three Rugged, Beautiful Boats You Can Build

Nick Schade

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 34 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Why another review? 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

With all the rave reviews already stated, I add my own.

Mr. Schade will break your heart in the very introduction of the book; at this moment you will come to understand the true dedication of this author to his craft (and love for his wife). Then there is a descent into the inner secrets of this craft that he loves. As an accomplished gymnast, he will certainly make this kayak-building appear easy, almost too easy, and yet the details are in place to convince you that, yes, you can do it yourself.

You have to pinch yourself to bring yourself back to the reality that you will spend many hours building this kayak, that it will cost you quite a bit, and that the process is not as easy as it looks. Then stop pinching yourself and start planning; the reality is that you can do it!

There are a few gaps in the details that I had to think my way through, but none of these gaps are intentional. In fact, these opportunities are more exciting than aggravating.

This is not the only good resource available for learning the strip-building technique. I am already modifying Mr. Schade's designs to include elements provided elsewhere, as he would even encourage himself. On the other hand, this book is all you need to make a great kayak, and the information in this book is superior to anything that I have seen elsewhere.

I would recommend this book even to those who never plan on building a kayak if for no other reason than to appreciate this fine art of shipbuilding.

Editorial Review:

Although books on strip building canoes abound, this is among the first to adapt the technique to crafting attractive, functional kayaks. Using high-quality, computer-generated illustrations and photographs to explain key techniques, the book provides complete plans and measurements for three different kayaks: 1) A simple solo craft for beginners, 2) A high-performance solo kayak for intermediate paddlers, and 3) A tandem design for two paddlers. With its easy-to-follow guidance and instructions, The Strip-Built Sea Kayak makes top-notch kayaks accessible to budget-minded paddlers.

Devlin's Boatbuilding: How to Build Any Boat the Stitch-and-Glue Way

Samual Devlin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Few people have done more than Sam Devlin to popularize wooden boatbuilding. For the past 15 years he has been designing, building, and helping others build his fleet of small sail and power boats. Ranging in length from 7 to 40 feet--so graceful, pert, and purposeful they seem to have been born on the waves--these boats belie the fact that they are built from sheet plywood using wire stitches and epoxy glue. In other words, anyone can build them, and many have. A 1988 WoodenBoat magazine profile of Devlin garnered more than 1,800 inquiries for his boat plans, an unbelievable response to any article in any magazine. Sailboats like Nancy's China (costs less to build than the reported cost of one place setting of Nancy Reagan's china) and powerboats like Surf Scoter are familiar, much-appreciated sights these days. Devlin developed this guide to building boats--his or any other designer's--from the building instructions he supplies with his plans. It is a mature, shop- and ocean-tested manual, covering everything from sharpening the tools to launching the finished boat. There is also a gallery of Devlin's designs and a detailed appendix listing sources for tools and other materials.

The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst

Nicholas Tomalin, Ron Hall

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Deeply thought-provoking and disturbing tale of human nature 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

In 1968, a London newspaper, inspired by recent feats of daring in the world of sailing, sponsored a contest that offered a trophy and large cash prize to the first person to successfully complete a solo, non-stop and unaided circumnavigation of the globe in a sailboat. This book is the morbidly fascinating story of one of the participants, Donald Crowhurst, a talented amateur sailor and electronics entrepreneur, who announced that he would build the world's most technologically advanced boat, including a first-of-its-kind on-board computer of his own design, and take the prize.

While sailing buffs will like this book, the real meat of it is in the look at human nature that it provides. Like many entrepeneurs, Crowhurst was a bit of a blowhard who ended up departing just hours before the deadline in a boat that had never been tested and with which he was totally unfamiliar. Busy with race preparations, he never built, much less installed, the much-publicized computer. Feeling certain he could make up time as he became more familar with the craft, Crowhurst began to tell "little white lies" in his sporadic radio communications (remember, there was no GPS back then -- the yachtsmen were truly on their own).

As his problems with the boat mounted, Crowhurst conceived an elaborate hoax to make the world believe he was on track to complete the race, maybe even win it all. For months he sailed around the South Atlantic, alone and increasingly desperate, monitoring radio communications about weather and constructing a fake ship's log and fake documentation that showed his supposed progress day-by-day. In the spring of 1969, when Crowhurst reestablished radio contact with his agent and family back in Britain, he learned a shocking truth. He was the only yachtsman still in the race. With all the others out of it, he had become a national celebrity, and a huge welcome was planned.

At this point, the audacious hoax turned tragic. It appears from his journals that Crowhurst suffered a complete mental breakdown in the week that followed. It was too late to confess or backtrack on his claims without complete humiliation; yet as the winner and only man still in the race, he was sure to be exposed as a cheat. A few days after his last journal entry, Crowhurst's boat was found abandoned and drifting in the Atlantic by another ship. He had left all the evidence of his hoax neatly arranged for the world to find.

Crowhurst is an unsympathetic character to read about, but by the end it was hard not to feel compassion in spite of everything he did. This book is much more than a reconstruction of his mysterious death. The authors invite the reader to think about the deficiencies in the heart and soul that lead human beings to lie and scheme, in spite of the inevitable disastrous results. Why is it so hard for people to be honest? And why is it these very people who lie and scheme who often attempt great things, while the honest people sit on the sidelines?

Reviewer: Liz Clare, co-author of the historical novel "To the Ends of the Earth: The Last Journey of Lewis and Clark"

Editorial Review:

The Sailor's Classics library introduces a new generation of readers to the best books ever written about small boats under sail

In the autumn of 1968, Donald Crowhurst set sail from England to participate in the first single-handed nonstop around-the-world sailboat race. Eight months later, his boat was found in the mid-Atlantic, intact but with no one on board. In this gripping reconstruction, journalists Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall tell the story of Crowhurst's ill-fated voyage.

Godforsaken Sea: Racing the World's Most Dangerous Waters

Derek Lundy

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Total reviews: 64 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Godforsaken Sea is the hair-raising account of the world's most demanding, dangerous, and deadly sailing race. Around the world, one sailor, one boat, no stops, no assistance.

Author Derek Lundy's vivid book follows the field of the 1996 - 1997 Vendee Globe through the race's grueling four-month circumnavigation of the globe, most of it through the terror of the Southern Ocean.

Lundy narrates the race through the eyes and experiences of sixteen sailors - fourteen men and two women - who embdoy the best and most eccentric aspects of our human condition. There's the gallant Brit who spends days beating back against the worst seas to save a fellow sailor; the Frenchman who bothers to salvage only a bottle of champagne from his broken and sinking boat; the sailor who comes to love the albatross that trails her for months, naming it Bernard; the sailor who calmly smokes a cigarette as his boat capsizes; and the Canadian who, hours before he disappears forever, dispatches this message:

If you drag things out too long here, you're sure to come to grief.

With the literary touch of Saint-Exupery and Conrad, Derek Lundy harnesses hurricane-force winds, six story waves, icebergs, and deafening noise. And he lays bare the spirit of the men and women who push themselves to the outer limits of human endeavor - even if it means never returning home.