CAPTAIN’S BOOKSHELF

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With our focus on seamanship in this issue, Jonathan Cooper discusses a new guide to docking, written by USCG-licensed captains, Ronald and Katherine Giampietro Redmond.

Starting with the grand dame of nautical reference books, Champman Piloting & Seamanship, boat handling guides are always a smart addition to your onboard library. Whether you’re an experienced captain or a first-time owner just getting your sea legs, there are few moments in boating that require as much skill, patience, precision, and understanding than docking. U.S. Coast Guard-licensed captains, Ronald and Katherine Giampietro Redmond, step in with another guide that could sit on your shelf, which should help just about anyone with that age-old boating skill required of every mariner. Sure, at times docking can be straightforward and often a deceptively easy task. But, in adverse conditions, this otherwise simple maneuver can quickly turn into an expensive and embarrassing nightmare. The list of worries is long: poor communication, inexperienced crew, high winds, strong currents, and tight slips, to name a few.

To help ease as many of these worries as possible, the authors have published a second edition of their boat handling guide, 7 Steps to Successful Boat Docking. Many of the points are aimed squarely at the novice boater to aid in basic principles of close-quarter maneuvers into and out of slips, and the directions are supported by clear language, instruction, and assistance for all recreational (and probably a few commercial) mariners. Wind, current, and other impediments to smooth docking are given quarter with albeit fairly rudimentary sketches of the authors’ recommended course of action in each circumstance. The book is also written to assist a wide variety of boats, including those with single-screw inboard propulsion, outboard, I/O, stern drives, and twin-engine vessels.

$14.99 7 Steps to Successful Boat Docking