Boatowners Mechanical and Electrical Manual 4/E - Hardcover

by Nigel Calder (Author)

The maintenance bible for boatowners is fully updated and 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 indispensable resource aboard, you have at your fingertips the best and most comprehensive advice on:

• Battery technologies, including recent developments in lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries and fuel cells
• 12- and 24-volt DC systems
• Electric and hybrid propulsion
• How to radically improve the energy efficiency of most boats
• Corrosion, bonding, and lightning protection
• Generators, inverters, battery chargers, wind and water generators, and solar power
• Electric motors and electric lights
• Marine electronics, including networking systems, 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

Back Jacket

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

"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

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

"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

Author Biography

NIGEL CALDER is widely acknowledged as the world's foremost writer on boat systems maintenance. A diesel mechanic for more than 25 years, he has also been a boatbuilder, cabinetmaker, and machinist. Calder is the author of How to Read a Nautical Chart, Nigel Calder's Cruising Handbook, Refrigeration for Pleasureboats, and Marine Diesel Engines. He is a frequent contributor to boating magazines in the United States and Britain.