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AdmiralS

AdmiralS

Senior Member
Joined
Aug 10, 2018
Messages
250
Location
USA
Vessel Name
VARKA
Vessel Make
Helmsman Trawlers 43 PH
Hello TF People's!

We are looking into building a little library on the boat.

We are looking for recommendations of books to add to the library.

I haven't decided if we want to do actual paperback books, or have a dedicated Kindle with the books, as well as PDF's of all of the various boats manuals and components.

I am quite handy, but would like to have some books onboard for those times that we may want to reference something while cruising and the internet isn't always available.

So far over the years, We have accrued these books over the years -

1. Voyaging Under Power, 4th Edition - by Beebe, Robert P., Umstot, Denis
2. The Arts of the Sailor: Knotting, Splicing and Ropework by Smith, Hervey Garrett
3. The Great Loop Experience - From Concept to Completion: A Practical Guide for Planning, Preparing and Executing Your Great Loop Adventure - by Hospodar, George, Hospodar, Patricia
4. The New Get Rid of Boat Odors: A Boat Owner's Guide to Marine Sanitation Systems and Other Sources of Aggravation and Odor by Hall, Peggie
5. Boatowners Mechanical and Electrical Manual 4th Edition - Calder, Nigel, International Marine Publishing

What else would be a good addition?

Thanks in advance!
Seth
 
Greetings,
Mr. AS. Good cookbooks. Your favorite cuisine types.



200w.gif
 
The complete book of anchoring and mooring, Karl R Hinz.
 
Operators manual for your engine.
Service manual for your engine.
Parts catalogue for your engine.
 
Boatowners Illustrated Electrical Hanbook from Charlie Wing

Troubleshootin and repairing diesel engines from Paul Dempsey, one of the most interesting book about diesel I read.

L
 
The only things you 'need' onboard are manuals, parts lists, and operating instructions. They can be either downloaded or converted to pdf's and stored on ipad (or on any tablet)
Paper books take up a lot of space and get musty so the fewer the better.
 
In addition to the manuals and the aforementioned Hinz book, our most-consulted tomes other than guide books were:
  • Nigel Calder's Boat Owners Mechanical and Electrical Manual
  • How to Read Water by Tristan Gooley
  • The Natural Navigator also by Gooley
  • Chapman's Piloting and Seamanship (if you had to own just one)
  • "Weather" by an author I don't recall but will find when I get home
 
SoWhat said:
The only things you 'need' onboard are manuals, parts lists, and operating instructions. They can be either downloaded or converted to pdf's and stored on ipad (or on any tablet)
Paper books take up a lot of space and get musty so the fewer the better.
Click to expand...

Depends on how and where you use the boat and your level of interest. Full time liveaboard and cruiser has different "needs" than weekend warrior.
 
caltexflanc said:
Depends on how and where you use the boat and your level of interest. Full time liveaboard and cruiser has different "needs" than weekend warrior.
Click to expand...

We are liveaboards April through November.

We do 1,000 to 1,500 miles of East Coast cruising a year. That will probably increase as time goes on.
 
The USA Today Wx book is good or the USPS Wx course manual.
 
To me reference books are only needed as much as your on board knowledge base.

Many books could be/should be read at least once and if desired notes taken. After that, they are pretty much mold builders in my opinion.

So I f they are cheaper on line or you can borrow/buy someone's and read it, great.

After that, spend the money on being able to get reliable internet service. The up to date answers are out there if you know where to look.

Just the other day I was looking to get rid of a few because they haven't been touched in a year and I usually follow my one year rule. Toss it, sell it, or give it away if not used in a year.
 
Get a Kindle, download all the manuals for your boat that you don't have hard copies of, save the on your computer in pdf format and load them onto the Kindle.


Then go shopping on Amazon and find all of the books you want. They are usually cheaper to buy and download than buying the hard copy books and don't take up any room on the boat.


I have an online account through a local library on my Kindle and through it I can access online libraries where I can search for titles, authors, topics, etc. I've downloaded and read almost 400 books in the past 4 years that I've had the Kindle and I'm just scratching the surface of what's available. When I get them from the online libraries I can usually have them for 21 days then they disappear off the Kindle. I don't think I've ever taken 21 days to read one of their books.


Can you tell I think it's a great way to go?
 
Chapman's Piloting
Calder's diesel book

All books, plus all systems manuals, in softcopy and available on all onboard tablets, laptops, etc.

-Chris
 
Chart No. 1

Grey Seas Under - Farley Mowat ..... intense

The Boat Who Wouldn't Float - Farley Mowat .... funny stuff

Chesapeake - James A. Michener .... fascinating
 
Another Farley Mowat book, "Sea of Slaughter", recounts the reduced numbers and total/local extinction of species since Europeans first arrived on the east coast of North America.

"My Discovery of America" also by Mowat, delves into the reasons why he was refused entry into the USA from Canada to do a promotional tour for "Sea of Slaughter".
 
Last edited:
Get a Kindle,....

No need to buy a Kindle...You can put the Kindle app on any android or Apple tablet or phone. It's free from the iTunes app store or wherever android owners get their apps.


--Peggie
 
HeadMistress said:
Get a Kindle,....

No need to buy a Kindle...You can put the Kindle app on any android or Apple tablet or phone. It's free from the iTunes app store or wherever android owners get their apps.


--Peggie
Click to expand...

I have two Kindles. I don't use them because I prefer the Kindle app on my Samsung phone.
I always have the phone with me, so the Kindle would take up unnecessary space.
The newer phones batteries are up to the challenge of reading all day long, unlike a few generations ago.
 
HeadMistress said:
Get a Kindle,....

No need to buy a Kindle...You can put the Kindle app on any android or Apple tablet or phone. It's free from the iTunes app store or wherever android owners get their apps.


--Peggie
Click to expand...

Thanks Peggie.

My thought on the dedicated Kindle was that since the basic e-paper one holds a charge for a very long time when unused, it was a fit for purpose device for storing all of the reading material without needing to worry about a phone being charged.

Your book is great by the way!
 
AdmiralS said:
My thought on the dedicated Kindle was that since the basic e-paper one holds a charge for a very long time when unused, it was a fit for purpose device for storing all of the reading material without needing to worry about a phone being charged.
Click to expand...

An IPad mini also holds a charge when not used. You can install the kindle app for books and pdf's or use the ibook app for pdf's. You can also install weather apps, AIS apps, navigation apps, Trawler forum app, and have access to the internet.
 
HeadMistress said:

No need to buy a Kindle...You can put the Kindle app on any android or Apple tablet or phone. It's free from the iTunes app store or wherever android owners get their apps.
Click to expand...


AdmiralS said:
My thought on the dedicated Kindle was that since the basic e-paper one holds a charge for a very long time when unused, it was a fit for purpose device for storing all of the reading material without needing to worry about a phone being charged.
Click to expand...


The idea of a dedicated tablet sounds OK, but I think if you choose a Kindle you're limited to Amazon/Kindle e-books. (???)

And some -- like Chapman's last I checked -- are only available from a different seller (Nook, in the Chapman case).

Our library is necessarily therefore seller-agnostic, as are our tablets (mostly); we just get the various apps -- Kindle, Nook, Play (or the iThing equivalent), Adobe, Overdrive, etc. -- so we're not limited by source.

And then those tablets are also our back-up nav, weather, etc. app machines too.

-Chris
 
caltexflanc said:
In addition to the manuals and the aforementioned Hinz book, our most-consulted tomes other than guide books were:

  • Nigel Calder's Boat Owners Mechanical and Electrical Manual
  • How to Read Water by Tristan Gooley
  • The Natural Navigator also by Gooley
  • Chapman's Piloting and Seamanship (if you had to own just one)
  • "Weather" by an author I don't recall but will find when I get home
Click to expand...


In addition to these excellent choices we also have more of the "no brainers":

"Marine diesel Engines" by Nigel Calder
"How Boat Things Work"
"This Old Boat" by Casey
"World Cruising Routes"
"heavy weather boating emergencies" by Luttrell

A copy of USCG navigation rules and regulations and numerous guide books about cruising and gunkholing around the PNW.

Also for less technical reading:
"the curve of time"
"Tides" by Jonathan White
"Longitude" by David sobel
 
Paddle to the Amazon...12,000 mile canoe journey from Canada to the Amazon, by Don Starkell.
 
A decent first aid book.
In oz, free downloads are available on ambulance websites
 
MurrayM said:
Medicine for Mountaineering...for when help is a looong time coming.
Click to expand...


Do you prefer this book to Auerbach or Forgey's books or are they considered complementary?
 
tozz said:
Do you prefer this book to Auerbach or Forgey's books or are they considered complementary?
Click to expand...

Don't know, just have a dog eared copy left over from my adventuring days.
 
Amazon Kindle e-books

GFC said:
Get a Kindle, download all the manuals for your boat that you don't have hard copies of, save the on your computer in pdf format and load them onto the Kindle.


Then go shopping on Amazon and find all of the books you want. They are usually cheaper to buy and download than buying the hard copy books and don't take up any room on the boat.


I have an online account through a local library on my Kindle and through it I can access online libraries where I can search for titles, authors, topics, etc. I've downloaded and read almost 400 books in the past 4 years that I've had the Kindle and I'm just scratching the surface of what's available. When I get them from the online libraries I can usually have them for 21 days then they disappear off the Kindle. I don't think I've ever taken 21 days to read one of their books.


Can you tell I think it's a great way to go?
Click to expand...

As a kindle author, You don't need a dedicated kindle device to read your kindle books. Any phone, tablet, PC, Mac, laptop, etc., will do.

In many cases, a Kindle will have lower resolution (and only black and white images) even if the images are in color by the author. So, there are some cases where a laptop or PC, or even iPad would be better than a kindle device.

An Amazon Kindle paperwhite is their best device yet, with the newer ones not as good as the latest paperwhite device, but they have incredible battery life. At the price, it is hard to not choose a Kindle fire tablet over a paperwhite, but the kindle fire device battery will need charging every few days, compared to a month or so with a paperwhite.

It irks me that Amazon won't fix the search problems on Kindle, so you can't search for anything with a symbol, like 50% since they strip off any symbol off your search keyword. They don't handle search phrases, only keywords. Their tech support says "just like google" but in reality, even BING is better than Amazon kindle search features.

There is a "send to kindle" app you can download off Amazon.com to format anything for shipping to your Kindle reader devices. While you can send a PDF to a kindle, it is hard to scale it where you can read it, compared to a tablet with Adobe reader installed.
 
Excellent additions on Chart 1 and a first aid manual. We used the "Onboard Medical Handbook" by Gill for the latter.

I am surprised we all missed the "Navigation Rules", shame on us!

The weather book I mentioned is "The Weather Identification Handbook" by Dunlop. Very handy.

As for technology and books, that is a personal issue. Some of us find books a faster to access (and find topics therein), sunlight readable form factor that never loses power and takes well to being dropped. Some of us cannot commit everything to memory. And I say this as a guy in the technology industry, and in particular mobile. So, whatever works for you.

We had manuals for each and every item and system on our rather complex boat, mostly in hard copy but many many soft copy versions as well. Remember, the definition of cruising is "Fixing your boat in exotic places".
 
Herbal Antibiotics & Herbal Anitvirals by Stephen Buhner.
His book on beer recipes is OK.
 
I would suggest books to identify wildlife, fish, birds, whales and more. I have chosen Golden Guides titles Fishing, Fishes, Seashores, Seashells, Birds of North America

The fish look like fish, ditto birds and all their titles have Realistic color drawings. Price 'em used.

What you need to know: The older versions are identical in content to the newest. The problem with the older ones (circa 1950's) is that the glue dries out eventually so pages loosen. Fix that with silicone and you're all set.

Fishes-GoldenGuide.jpg


As a side note, my Fishes is circa 1955 and it is still in use today over 60 years later.
 
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