Boatowner's Mechanical and Electrical Manual: How to Maintain, Repair, and Improve Your Boat's Essential Systems, Edition 3

Nigel Calder

Jun 2005 · McGraw Hill Professional

About this ebook

The boatowner's foremost troubleshooting guide, now better than ever

If it's on a boat and it has screws, wires, or moving parts, it's covered in Boatowner's Mechanical and Electrical Manual. When you leave the dock with this book aboard, you have at your fingertips the best and most comprehensive advice on:

• Battery technologies
• 12- and 24-volt DC systems
• Corrosion, bonding, and lightning protection
• Generators, inverters, and battery chargers
• Electric motors and electric lights
• Marine electronics, antennas, and RFI
• Diesel engines
• Transmissions, shaft brakes, and propellers
• Refrigeration and air-conditioning
• Tanks, plumbing, and through-hulls
• Pumps and watermakers
• Steering, autopilots, and wind vanes
• Stoves and heaters
• Winches, windlasses, and bow thrusters
• Spars, rigging, and roller reefing

"If you had to choose a single book to help you assess and maintain your boat gear, this would be it."—Practical Sailor

"A truly remarkable bible. . . . This book is the best of its kind."—WoodenBoat

"A major achievement. . . . It would be hard to imagine anything going wrong on a boat that couldn't be figured out with this book."—Sailing World

"The world's best technical reference and troubleshooting book."—Sailing Inland and Offshore

"This manual will be of lasting interest to anyone who wants to know how their boat works, what has gone wrong when it doesn't, and how it could be fixed."—Classic Boat

"Without becoming too complex, the book covers almost every imaginable mechanical or electrical matter in the marine environment."—Work Boat World

"Calder lives what he writes, . . . [and] what he offers . . . is practical solutions to problems associated with increasingly complex marine systems. . . . [A] bargain for anyone in the construction and repair side of the boat business."—Professional Boatbuilder

Ratings and reviews

If you love your boat and want to know all you can about her systems then you should own this book. Over the years I have owned and read many technical maintenance manuals/books. If I was asked to keep only one of those books it would be Nigel Calder's Boatowners Mechanical and Electrical manual. He breaks things down in a way that makes it easier to fully understand the system at hand and what steps are required to keep it working the way it was intended to. He writes in a manner that fully and completely explains the subject and what needs to be done to accomplish it properly. All the while keeping the reader interested and keen on learning more. A must have addition to any Boatowners library.

Applies to every type of vessel we have worked or lived on. Invaluable aid to have.

I use it all the time. I'm a deck hand for the past 6 years.

About the author

Nigel Calder is widely acknowledged as the world's foremost writer on boat systems maintenance. He is a frequent contributor to boating magazines in the United States and Britain.