A man who owns 11 boats, six on one side of the Atlantic and five on the other, is either eccentric…or truly loves boats. Ian Scott, the author of Mudlark’s Ghosts, is the latter. His story of 1...
A practical test of whistles? Yup. It’s right there on page 184 in “Safety and Survival.” If you own a good old boat, you need this book. This book was created from articles publishe...
High seas adventure, piracy, kidnapping, political intrigue, an Irish Sea gale, and even a bit of romance…all this and more awaits the readers of A Ship’s Tale Jay Young tells a story about a gr...
When you see a book title like Cruising: The Basics, you would normally assume that it would cover ground about the cruising lifestyle: sailing from port to port, provisioning, and the sort of tips an...
In this lavishly illustrated volume, Jean-Luc Pallas, professor of Recreational Marine Mechanics at La Rochelle Technical College in France, has produced what I would regard as a “must-read̶...
BY JOHN VIGOR, AUDIOBOOK NARRATED BY THERESA MEIS (PRODUCED BY GOOD OLD BOAT, 2006; 2 HOURS; $15.00/DOWNLOAD, $19.95/MP3 CD, $24.00/AUDIO CD) REVIEWED BY MORGAN DOYLE, AGE 12. Sally Steals an Elephant...
It’s great fun to go cruising with Silver Donald Cameron. Through his books we’ve traveled with him several times, and each time has been a pleasure. Don’s tales of his voyages intro...
Mark: I finally made it and I’m glad I did! I’ve tried to read this book a couple of times before and never got through it. For some reason it just never caught and I’d end up puttin...
BY PAUL ESTERLE (CAPT’N PAULEY PRODUCTIONS, 2006; 261 PAGES; $28.95 USD) REVIEWED BY DAVE AULTFATHER Capt’n Pauley’s Boat Repairs and Upgrades is a collection of 78 short how-to arti...
BY JOHN VIGOR, AUDIOBOOK NARRATED BY THERESA MEIS (PRODUCED BY GOOD OLD BOAT, 2006; 2 HOURS; $15.00/DOWNLOAD, $19.95/MP3 CD/$24.00/AUDIO CD) REVIEWED BY MORGAN DOYLE, AGE 12. Be sure to fully charge y...
With The Figurehead, released in September 2006, Paul “Dean” Coker has created the first of a series he calls the Carter Phillips Sailing Adventures. With this introduction to his sailor a...
Either Becky Coffield has a very good memory or she took excellent notes back in the 1970s when she and her husband, Tom, spent six years cruising north and south, from Oregon to Alaska and on down to...
If you’re shopping for an affordable sailboat that you can own for years to come, Gregg Nestor has just done you a big favor. He has written the book you’re looking for: Twenty Affordable ...
The sailing vessel Bolero is the centerpiece of this gorgeous book and she deserves such an honor. Though other boats with great records melted into the ooze of some obscure boatyard, the sheer beauty...
What’s new? DVDs of sailors’ cruises seem to be the latest thing showing up in the Good Old Boat office. There’s a trend here. More people are publishing their own books (books-on-de...
The author assures the reader in his Introduction, that “This book is not a rant against modern technology.” Rather, it ” . . . renews emphasis on personal skills, special knowledge ...
Mark and Diana Doyle, bless ’em, are a couple of sailors who re-invented the cruising guide when they put together the book they’d like to see while cruising the Intracoastal Waterway. Ano...
Beth Leonard’s pen is magic. She is able to write as few others can. Better yet for sailors everywhere, she goes to the ends of the earth in order to have strong subject matter to present. Over ...
What’s new? DVDs of sailors’ cruises seem to be the latest thing showing up in the Good Old Boat office. There’s a trend here. More people are publishing their own books (books-on-de...
You’re going to like Jack Becker. He doesn’t match the stereotypical sailor profile. He’ll leave you wondering why he’s made the choices he has. And when he succeeds against th...
By the early 1900s the U.S. and Canadian Grand Banks fishing schooners were among the last all-sail commercial fleets left in the western world. The lives of these fishermen were hard, cold, and dange...
L. Francis Herreshoff, in his introduction to The Compleat Cruiser, holds that there is no better way of instructing than “carrying on a narrative.” Parker’s story revisits 1970̵...
Why is it that men predominate among sailors? Sailing a boat doesn’t take superior strength. It doesn’t demand a uniquely male skill. Having a Y chromosome is not required. Sailing isn...
Mark and Diana Doyle, authors of Managing the Waterway: Biscayne Bay, FL to Dry Tortugas, FL, point out that no less than 882 islands make up the Florida Keys. There have probably been just as many cr...
This is the one book that should be aboard every cruising sailboat. When the first edition came out, I read it cover-to-cover. When the second edition came out, a flip through the pages showed some up...
Ferenc Máté is perhaps best-known to good old sailors for his “best boats” books, in which he describes classic designs as eloquently as he might describe living beings. In Ghost Sea, he t...
When one hears Ted Hood’s name, the first connection is quite likely to Hood Sails, the loft he founded back in the 1960s and which remains a force in that industry, though Ted has had no connec...
Upgrading a good old sailboat can be a game of cat and mouse. As you wriggle into seldom visited corners of your boat, it’s hard to keep up with all the little unforeseen projects that present t...
Here is a little book with an assortment of sixty or so light stories from the nautical world. There is history, both sublime and ridiculous, modern and not; stories of steam and sail, and wonderful n...
“Ice blink” is a name given to a white light seen on the horizon, especially on the underside of low clouds, due to reflection from a distant field of ice. This phenomenon has been used hi...
