Readings from the book

On a pretty regular basis my lovely wife and do readings from the book of Chapman. That's the Chapman Piloting Seamanship and Small Boat Handling book. It's a honking big book filled with useful information for boaters.

Ironically, our newer edition went down with the ship. Maybe we should have done more reading about local knowledge and the unreliability of charts. However, we did benefit from the information about abandoning ship, so there's that.

We had an older edition safe in my home library, so that's what we are using now. It's one way to keep our skills sharp through the long winter.

Another favorite of mine is: The Complete Rigger's Apprentice, by Brian Toss. If you've got a sailboat and want to understand everything about keeping the mast from falling off the boat, it's a handy book to have. It's also a pretty decent knot book too.

That too was lost to the sea. However, we were given a West Marine gift card and purchased a replacement.

Those books aren't cheap, but well worth the money. Any knowledge and skills you can pick up from good books saves a ton of money down the road. Every time you have to pay to get something done on a boat it's usually a minimum of at least one Boat Buck. (One Boat Buck equals $1,000) They add up fast.

-Sixbears