How Boat Things Work: An Illustrated Guide

Like everyone I am a fan of Nigel Calder's series of books on the technical aspects of boats. I have to say this book is a notch above in being able to visualize how these systems actually look. The isometrics illustrations and cutaways are the prefect complement to other resources. Highly recommend adding this to your collection.

I got it due to a recommendation from a captain at work. It is a good introduction to a lot of boating things and the diagrams are very useful

Charlie Wing has done a little bit of public service with "How Boat Things Work: An Illustrated Guide", although McGraw-Hill has done a disservice to their fine illustration department by not crediting their work by name. Books of this sort which are extensively photo-illustrated often make things harder to see and understand because of the issues involved with lighting small bits in enclosed spaces and/or scale issues. Clear-line illustration of this sort suffers from none of these drawbacks.Captain Wing--whose name is familiar to those of you nautically-minded as author of "Get Your Captain's License" and "The Boatowner's Illustrated Electrical Handbook"--reviews boat systems that you'd likely see aboard your 32'-class cruiser. Wing's no stranger to learning in extremis, either--indeed, as he makes clear, he began his journey as the systems aboard his own cruiser successively packed it in over the course of a season.Section I deals with propulsion, and his overview of the various folding/feathering props should disabuse you of the notion that installing these aboard your boat would be a good idea. (That's not what he says, it's what I inferred. Seriously, the diagrams alone are frightening. Why would you hang your boat's propulsion upon something that has that many teeny pieces and moves about?) At any rate, it's a good overview of propulsion. He uses the Yanmar 2GM as his example, and includes some sage advice--such as installing a larger primary fuel filter.Section 2 covers steering. I like wheels, but he doesn't cover tiller systems. He also explains servopendulum autopilots.Section 3 covers standing rigging, swageless fittings and tuning your rig. It's a brief chapter that's at best a big-picture overview.Section 4 is called "Line Handling", which is pretty ambitious--it includes basic deck skills like coiling down lines properly to making them off through knots, block and tackles and the set up of your running rigging. My nit to pick here is that Captain Wing doesn't review the fundamentals of reeving multi-part blocks. How many times has someone unreeved crucial blocks, such as at the mainsheet, and left you wondering how to get it reeved properly? His coverage of reeving to advantage and disadvantage is too short and too sparsely illustrated. This is a particularly salty skill and probably would have added fewer than 2 full pages to the text.Section 5 covers ground tackle--this is what sailors usually call the frayed mess of crap that they've shoved forward into the fo'c's'le. Ground tackle often merits little attention let alone discussion, which is a mistake. Regular practice with it will save your skin. I'd have liked Captain Wing's discussion of various moorings (in particular the Bahamian) to have earned a little more coverage, though. After all, as I tell my students, there's no such thing as a book called "101 Funny Anchoring Stories".Chapter 6 is the reason I bought this book. As the co-author of a book called "The 12-volt bible" you'd expect the Captain to spend some quality time on this subject. He does, and that's a good thing, since electrical systems are growing steadily larger and more complicated in small cruising boxes. I'd like to have seen an overview of basic tests that you would perform when tying up at dock--for example, how to use a multi-meter when checking for correct polarity.Chapter 7 is "plumbing", which offers a good overview of general marine plumbing systems. It is not, however, by any means a troubleshooting and repair guide.Captain Wing has done an excellent job of creating a high-level overview of major boat systems. It's an excellent companion for boat owners and those of you who bare-boat charter as a familiarization guide.

For any boater, this is a must-have. A breakdown of all different projects. I recommend this to all new and experienced boaters.

I bought this for my husband and we love it as we are learning all about sailboats and how to fix things on our own.

Excelent.

Not what I hoped for when I bought one for myself, one for an experienced blow boater (25 Chicago to Macinaw races) and one for an experienced motor yacht salesman.

This is a fabulous book! Learn the words needed to converse with tradepeople or to move on successfully to repair manuals and more specific books. See a quick image (literally - it is full of drawings) of a part or system so you can think about what's going on inside it. Wish I'd see it early-on so I would not have struggled so! Keep it on board and you can quickly understand what might cause that engine click, or stuck valve handle, etc. and at least be able to discuss it intelligently. It isn't a repair manual, as some seem to have expected. I great gift book for someone who just bought a vintage sailboat!