Boatowner's Sheet Anchor: A Practical Guide to Fitting Out, Upkeep, and Alteration of the Small Yacht

While this is the second and modernized edition of this work, really, there is little actually new in the boating field. New bits of hardware, accessories, accommodation and decorative styles, materials - yes, but boatbuilding and maintenance in its fundamentals isn't much different than when practiced by Noah, Argus, Pett, Pook, and Phil Rhodes. These gentlemen had the same basic problems to meet and overcome. The laws of ships came only with an understanding of the laws of the seas and the winds, and these things have not changed these centuries since a slope-headed forebear first clung to a log, holding upright a forked branch supporting a skin, and discovered that his rude craft actually moved. From that moment on, this gentleman had his problems. He must keep dry, must keep his log afloat, free of borers and rot, must keep his "sails" drawing and his spars standing. As far horizons, trade, war, and conquest lured, his problems became more complex - and lo! we have a man faced with exactly the same problems that tens of thousands of "boaty" folks face today. Somehow, we have lost track of the simple, homey "dory-shop" sort of information which our forebears knew and understood so well. And so, the author - an opinionated tinkerer, incurable romanticist, ever-hopeful experimenter, but loving the smell of Stockholm tar and the ring of a caulking mallet as much as any - presents, under one cover, some of the gleanings of his own and others' experience and adventure. A word from Josh Slocum, a "boatshop" sermon by Webster Eldridge who builds modern boats to fare-smack lines hard by, the lesson of a bashed finger, a forgotten owner who once wintered close aboard and had some unique ideas, dreams exploded and dreams come true - all these things shall go to make up this book; all these things, as they apply to the modern yachtsman and owner, shall be presented... [From the Preface]