Boat Docking

Bookstore

Charles' Core Boating Books

-on this page:

• Boat Docking itself
• Chapman Piloting
• Oceanography and Seamanship
• The Complete Book of Anchoring and Mooring
• Voyaging Under Power
• The Nature of Boats
• The Voyage of the Northern Magic
• Get Rid of Boat Odors
• Sailing Alone Around the World
• The Perfect Storm
• Stick and Rudder
• White Squall (the movie)
• Also, be sure to check out our Charles' Choices page - book reviews of favorite non-nautical novels

Charles' Core Boating Books:

Harvey Island Enterprises, the publisher of Boat Docking, in association with Amazon.com, the Earth's Biggest Bookstore, is pleased to present our own book for sale along with several other of our favorites!

Firstly, here is Boat Docking itself. Amazon.com ships promptly and performs secure on-line credit card transactions. The Amazon.com web site is powerful and versatile, easy to use and full of ideas and information.

Click here for Amazon.com's Boat Docking page.

Chapman Piloting: Seamanship and Small Boat Handling (62nd edition), by Elbert S. Maloney, is probably the most popular and singularly authoritative book on boating available. This hardcover book covers every topic imaginable, and is heavily illustrated. Every serious boater would do well to own a copy of Chapman's.

Click here for Amazon.com's Chapman Piloting page.

Oceanography and Seamanship, by William G. Van Dorn, is a wonderful book concerning the interaction of the water and the boat, although to say only this over-generalizes the many, detailed specific topics dealt with in this book. It is a technical book, but don't let the many formuale, calculations and tables scare you off - it is very safe to skip over them, if math and physics aren't your thing, simply accepting that the author knows what he's talking about (he does!), and learn mainly the principles. There is a lot in this book about oceanography which many boaters will find fascinating, even if he didn't eventually apply it to the care and operation of our boats, which he does.

Click here for Amazon.com's Oceanography and Seamanship page.

The Complete Book of Anchoring and Mooring, 2nd ed. (2001) by Earl R. Hinz, answers questions about anchoring that most of us wouldn't even think of asking. Written by an experienced blue water sail boater who has done his homework, this book covers not only the technique and equipment of anchoring, but also the construction of rope and chain lockers, hurricane anchoring (be prepared to swing to a single anchor!), and much more. 'Thorough but readable' - just like Boat Docking!

Click here for Amazon.com's The Complete Book of Anchoring and Mooring page.

Voyaging under Power was released by Capt. Robert P. Beebe in 1974, and is now revised and updated by James F. Leishman. This book is widely acclaimed as an essential reference for the power cruising boater - it will take you to the next port or around the world, and it's a good, salty read, too! Here is an excerpt.

Click here for Amazon.com's Voyaging under Power page.

The Nature of Boats: Insights and Esoterica for the Nautically Obsessed, is best represented by its subtitle; Gerr's imaginative and amazingly well-informed book covers a wide variety of topics which will fascinate any thinking boater, but it doesn't purport or try to cover everything about "boatness" from the ground (water) on up. Rather, he spends 418 easy-reading but information-packed pages discussing things which - and I'm guessing here - have captured his interest, over the years, and which he doesn't think anyone else has published from quite the same perspective. In other words, his choices of what to include and what to omit seem, to me, very personal.

But this naval architect's choices are excellent! You still won't know everything about a boat's nature, having read this book, but you'll know an awful lot more than when you started, and will be very glad for each morsel of understanding.

Click here for Amazon.com's The Nature of Boats page.

The Voyage of the Northern Magic, by Diane Stuemer, tells the very personal and amazing story of the Stuemer family's four-year around-the-world sailboat trip.

This isn't a boating tale as much as one of exploration. Inevitably, as many of the world's wonders, and some of its horrors, unfold before this woman, her husband and their three sons, they find themselves learning as much about themselves as about blue-water cruising. They left in their wake a benevolence and altruism which continues to this day. Diane's observations about the world propel this far and above a "look what we did" story, and gives it a meaning beyond that of a travelogue. I do wonder, however, if they had known before setting out how arduous and dangerous their trip was to be, whether they would have started.

But start they did, and despite some serious soul-searching along the way, they also finished. There's so much more to say, but I think it's best left to the book itself. The Voyage of the Northern Magic.

Get Rid of Boat Odors, by Peggie Hall, is the definitive reference. The subtitle, A Boat Owner's Guide to Marine Sanitation Systems and Other Sources of Aggravation and Odor, describes it better than I could. If you don't think you need this book, you need this book. It will substantially reduce your odds of ever having one of those "amusing" (and much too common) horror stories about heads and holding tanks. It is the most comprehensive guide available on the subject.

This book covers all aspects of marine sanitation as well as other odor-causing problems like dirty bilges. The idea is to resolve odors, not just to disguise them. There is also information on major marine equipment brands, with diagrams, schematics and contact information.

What Peggie doesn't know isn't worth knowing.

Click here for Amazon.com's Get Rid of Boat Odors page.

Sailing Alone Around the World, by Joshua Slocum, is a simple, inspiring book, written soon after the author returned from the first solo circumnavigation of the Earth ever done! And this was all in the 1890's! Never a moment drags as Capt. Slocum escapes from pirates, visits South Seas islands, and spends weeks alone (although not entirely alone, but you'll have to read the book to find out more) in the middle of the ocean in his most remarkable of boats, the redoubtable Spray.

Click here for Amazon.com's Sailing Alone Around the World page.

The Perfect Storm, by Sebastian Junger, is an engrossing, largely historical account of the last voyage of the New England fishing boat, the Andrea Gail. Junger manages an adroit mixture of human interest and character development interwoven with technical aspects of boating, fishing, meteorology and oceanography. It's uncanny how seamlessly he slides from fact to supposition, never leaving any doubt about which is which, all in the vehicle of a true, gripping story which propels the reader from page to page.

Join the legions whom this book has enthralled - click here for Amazon.com's The Perfect Storm page.

Stick and Rudder, by Wolfgang Langewiesche, describes in loving and beautifully-written detail the mechanics of how an aircraft flies and how to control it in the air. This book was published in 1944 - but the laws of physics are about the same now as then, and the many reprintings and hundreds of thousands of copies in print attest to its status as a classic.

Even if you're not an aircraft pilot - and I'm not (sadly) - this work is simply fascinating if you've got the technical curiosity to want to know how one of mankind's most recent and amazing inventions - flying machines - work. Learn how an airplane steers (not with the rudder!), what is "adverse yaw," and why, according to Langewiesche, the control that makes the airplane go up or down is the throttle, and the one that makes if go faster or slower is the yoke ("stick," in his day, controlling the elevators).

What does this have to do with boating? Nothing, or at least not directly. But if you love Boat Docking as so many other thousands have, you'll enjoy Stick and Rudder almost as much!

Video - White Squall. This gripping movie's plot is taken from a true story from the early 1960's. It concerns a sailing ship which took on crews of high-school age boys for one-year stints, during which time they continued their studies but also, of course, learned to sail. The script covers the students' personal transformations as the ardors of the sea, and of the deeply committed and controversially strict captain (expertly played by Jeff Bridges), teach them much more than they had expected.
The sailing photography is outstanding, and worth the price of the movie alone.

Now, although this is Hollywood, the basic story is real, and so the ending is not what one might otherwise expect. I will say nothing more, except that I accept the film makers' jugdements completely, and wholeheartedly recommend White Squall.