Instant answers for your boat handling, navigation, and seamanship questions

"The Instant Handbook" uses a dynamic new quick-reference format to cover the critical aspects of piloting, seamanship, and boat handling under sail or power more accessibly and effectively than has ever been done before. It puts at your fingertips all the information you need about: Boat Handling Under Power--Bob Sweet Sail Trim and Rig Tuning--Bill Gladstone Using Nautical Charts--Bob Sweet Using GPS--Bob Sweet Using VHF and SSB Radios--Bob Sweet Rules of the Road and Running Light Patterns--Charlie Wing Knots, Splices, and Line Handling--Charlie Wing Anchoring--Peter Nielsen Onboard Weather Forecasting--Bob Sweet Heavy Weather Sailing--John Rousmaniere Diesel Engine Care and Repair--Nigel Calder Emergencies On Board--John Rousmaniere Emergency First Aid On Board--Richard Clinchy

A companion volume to Ocean Yachtmaster for those taking the Yachtmaster Ocean Certificate, and for navigation revision.

Ancient Ocean Crossings paints a compelling picture of impressive pre-Columbian cultures and Old World civilizations that, contrary to many prevailing notions, were not isolated from one another, evolving independently, each in its own hemisphere. Instead, they constituted a "global ecumene," involving a complex pattern of intermittent but numerous and profoundly consequential contacts. In Ancient Ocean Crossings: Reconsidering the Case for Contacts with the Pre-Columbian Americas, Stephen Jett encourages readers to reevaluate the common belief that there was no significant contact between the emerging civilizations of Eurasia and Africa and peoples who occupied the terra incognita beyond the great oceans. More than a hundred centuries separate the time that Ice Age hunters are conventionally thought to have crossed a land bridge from Asia into North America and the arrival of Columbus in the Bahamas in 1492. Traditional belief has long held that earth's two hemispheres were essentially cut off from one another as a result of the post-Pleistocene meltwater-fed rising oceans. These oceans, along with deserts and mountains, formed impermeable barriers to interhemispheric communication. This viewpoint implies that the cultures of the Old World and those of the Americas developed independently. Drawing on abundant evidence to support his theory for significant pre-Columbian contacts, Jett suggests that many ancient peoples had both the seafaring capabilities and the motives to cross the oceans and, in fact, did so repeatedly and with great impact. His deep and broad work synthesizes information and ideas from archaeology, geography, linguistics, climatology, oceanography, ethnobotany, genetics, medicine, and the history of navigation and seafaring, making an innovative and persuasive multidisciplinary case for a new understanding of human societies and their diffuse but interconnected development.

Electronic navigation, although still relatively new, is becoming increasingly more common, particularly on commercial vessels. This handbook offers a wealth of detailed information about how different charting systems operate and answers the most commonly asked questions regarding electronic charts (ENC, RNC, DNC) and electronic chart systems (ECDIS, RCDS, ECS). The first resource to provide so much detail on all facets of ECDIS and Electronic Charting Systems, it is certain to serve as the bible for ECDIS users for years to come. It not only provides information for training programs but also for engineers maintaining ECDIS Systems in the field.

The book will be of specific interest to those who need to know about selection, implementation, operational use, benefits, and management of these systems, without getting into the technical details of how ECDIS/GIS actually works.

Since its inception in 1992, The Mariner s Book of Days has been hailed as the best, most entertaining nautical desk diary and calendar to see print. It is also a valuable reference in its own right; each annual edition completely different from its predecessor has become a collector s item. On each right-hand page is a day- by-day accounting of historical events and space for daily notes, appointments, and reminders. On each left-hand page is a fascinating miscellany of what Robert Louis Stevenson once called the entertainment of fooling among boats. The Mariner s Book of Days is a daily, weekly, monthly, annual reminder of the things we love most about the watery world: the pleasures of choosing, building and maintaining our own boats; the intricacies of seamanship and navigation; the development of nautical knowledge; the traditions of the sea; the evolution of a way of life. It is organized in a generally topical manner yet has a labyrinthine quality, not unlike the way we think about the sea when we are so unfortunate as to be away from it. One thing leads to another and then another, and before we know it we re building a boat with Howard Chapelle, or sailing around the world with Joshua Slocum, or having a drink with Captain John Smith, or, perhaps best of all, dreaming about boats, ships, and the sea with Wynken, Blynken, and Nod. The Mariner s Book of Days is an annual treasure. Year by year it takes us on a new and different 365-day imaginary voyage through time, an encyclopedic passage through the maritime past, present and future.