Boating Tips: Better Ways to Float Your Boat: Practical Ways to Improve, Operate and Maintain Your Cruising Boat

This book is not intended to teach someonehow to sail or operate a power vessel. Its purpose is to add to the enjoymentof cruising by accomplished boaters. During my years of boating experiences Ihave owned a new motor cruiser, a used trawler, three new sailboats and twoused sailboats...not in that order--but that many boats of three distinct types. In the early years of our boating my spouse and I did our best to educateourselves about operating our boats, safety, maintenance and navigation. At some point it dawned on us that there arenumerous ways to enhance the boating experience which are not included insafety and navigation courses or included in manuals for maintenance oroperation of boats. We joined a boat club whose members were for the most partowners of the same make boat as ours. This group was located in the Chicagoarea and was called "Great Lakes Fleet 21." At that time it consisted mostly ofowners of Catalina sailboats. Here we began to learn things we hadn't seen in print. Some of the information we learned was "how to" do itinstructions. Others were more like jury-rigging something...you take somethingintended for a specific function and adapt it to another use. Although some ofthe ideas are my own, others came from various sources. Many came from numerousfriends we have made during our boating experiences. Over the years as werelocated our city of residence we have belonged to a number of other boatingclubs. We have learned from them all. I hope you find the tips included here tobe useful and efficient so that they will help make your boating experiencesmore pleasurable. The Author