The Nature of boats

As I sit reading this book at my computer I am compelled to stop due to the fact that I am suffering information overload.

I hesitated to buy this book thinking it may be interesting but does it tell me more about boats. Now I will buy a book if it has perhaps 2-3 pages with info I want, chapter 44 Scantling rules. It tells me how to estimate hull weight without measuring every item (my reason for purchase). I expected this book to repeat information I already have and it does, but not nearly so much as I thought it might. This book is an absolute mine of information. Someone recommended this as a first book followed by Ted Brewer's Book understanding boat design. I would say Teds book is the better first book, that is for those who know little or nearly nothing about boats.

The only criticism I can make of this book is the graphs are a bit small. No real problem because I can redraw them on my own paper.

There have been no recent posts by D. Gerr, so if you are out there I want you to know this has instantly become my favourite book on boats.

 

The reason I always recommend Gerr's book as the first one for a beginner is because, in most of the book, he speaks to the beginner before introducing the technical material and that avoids much confusion so the reader doesn't have to fill in the blanks. You are right that it is not only useful to novices though. He offers a ton of informative data that can be used even before the reader understands the reasons for it all.

If you want to go further, you do need other books that get deeper into many of the subjects and Brewer offers a concise over view of much of the rest. Somewhere along the line Skene's is very good as well as many others depending on what kinds of boats and how far you are interested in going.