Boating and Sailing.pdf - Moja ladja

Introduction
As Ted Turner once said, “It ain’t as easy as it looks.” Turner, an accomplished boater and
former America’s Cup skipper, was not talking about boating, but about his success in
business. However, an experienced skipper makes handling a boat look very easy, when in
fact, it’s a combination of knowledge and physical skills that takes a bit of preparation even
to get started, and years of study and practice to master.
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Boating and Sailing, Second Edition, offers that preparation,
beginning with the basics and then wedding them to some of the more technical topics in
the later chapters. (For those who are not novices, skipping chapters is allowed and even
encouraged—the convenient chapter outlines in the Contents at a Glance and the many
subheads make it very easy to find your way around.) And it includes a look at many modern
developments in boating, such as the rapid rise of the four-stroke outboard and the
widespread use of electronic charting and computerized navigation.
There will not be a test at the end of the semester, nor even pop quizzes along the way.
However, if your state is one that requires you to pass a boating-knowledge test before
acquiring a license, this book is designed to give you all you need and lots more.
Boating may not be as easy as it looks, but it’s not all that difficult if you have a guide to
direct you around the reefs and rough spots.
Most boating books are written as if they are military drill books, which makes sense if
you’re studying to be captain of a nuclear submarine—there’s nothing funny about driving
the Sea Wolf into the Bosporus Straits. But recreational boating is supposed to be fun,
and I hope this book will be fun, too.
The design of this book means you don’t have to read every chapter to make it useful. In
fact, if you’re a lake or bay boater who never intends to get out of sight of land, you can
probably skip right over Part 3 on marine navigation. Ditto for Part 7 on sailing, if you’re
a confirmed powerboater. And sailors who wouldn’t be caught dead in a “stinkpot” may
choose to bypass Chapters 2 and 3 on engines and props—though if you run an auxiliary
kicker, you may want to make a few crib notes, just in case.
With The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Boating and Sailing, Second Edition, you can easily locate
all the information you need—whether you’re just getting started in boating, or you’ve
had some experience on the water and want to know more about the arts of navigation,
anchoring, or rough-water handling. And although there’s a very specific vocabulary in
boating, I’ve taken care to define every term in everyday language that won’t leave you
guessing.