Rocks and Shoals on the Path to Bliss (Re: V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N & charts)

Forrest Brownell (forrest@slic.com)
Mon, 01 Mar 1999 13:02:29 -0500


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West Wight Potter Website at URL
http://www.lesbois.com/wwpotter/
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Though I admit that "downtime" isn't the first word to spring to mind, I
wouldn't presume to tell anyone how to spend his (or her) honeymoon.

However, I _can_ recommend a good book on small-boat navigation. It's
David Burch's _Fundamentals of Kayak Navigation_, 2d ed. If you can do
it in a kayak, after all, you can almost certainly do it in a Potter.

Burch's book isn't perfect, of course, and it doesn't address problems
peculiar to sailing boats. Kayaks don't heel under way, for example, and
they usually don't have 3' sliding keels to help them find the bottom.
Still, _Kayak Navigation_ is one of the better books currently in
print. If you supplement it with Leonard Eyges' _The Practical Pilot_,
you'll cover most of the bases. (I don't recommend Eyges as your only
reference. He's a bit too fond of proprietary gadgets, for one thing,
and his treatment of navigation in tidal waters is only perfunctory.)

Forrest Brownell
South Colton NY
forrest@slic.com