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Free Sailing Reference Books

toddster

Curator of Broken Parts
Blogs Author
This thread is for links to free sailing reference books that are available on-line.
The answers to many recent noob questions (and many of my own) might be found in a sailing reference library. While there are many reference books out there, some of them - though invaluable - are actually priced pretty high. However there is quite a bit of material offered for free, on-line. Some of it is a bit dated, some is free because it is government-published. But while the latest gadgets and eThings may not be considered, there is a lot of basic information out there.

Another advantage of eBooks is that you can keep a lot of them on-board, or in your pocket, at all times.

To start off, here is a set that has recently been brought to my attention.

Four books by Steve and Linda Dashew:
Practical Seamanship: Essential skills for the modern sailor
Surviving The Storm: Coastal & Offshore Tactics
Mariner's Weather Handbook
Offshore Cruising Encyclopedia, 2nd Edition

A voluminous offshore medical reference:
The Ship Captain's Medical Guide (UK)

The classic guide to celestial navigation:
The American Practical Navigator - Bowditch

Wow! While trying to find the best Bowditch link, I hit the mother load! (See the "Yachting" link down at the bottom of the menu.)
Er... never mind. Too good to be true. Apparently you have to buy something first to get these files. Some of the menus come up in cyrillic, Looks kind of dodgy. In fact, I'll remove the link.

Andrew Evans has made his book available for free for many years, but you can toss him a little gratitude by buying the latest edition for kindle, for around five bucks.
Thoughts, Tips, Techniques, and Tactics for Single-Handed Sailing

Other suggestions? Reviews? I know there may be essentials that are not free, but let's try to keep those separate for now.

There are a few websites that purport to offer PDF versions of older editions of Chapman, but they are all pretty dodgy-looking and I did not try to open them.
 
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Christian Williams

E381 - Los Angeles
Senior Moderator
Blogs Author
The Gutenberg Project has Slocum, "Two Years Before the Mast," Melville's "Typee", and several others (use their search function).

The GP is a marvelous free resource for books out of copyright, although the ebook appearance is often uncorrected and ragged.

While there grab Ben Franklin's Autobiography, which will make you smile.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=sailing

F'rinstance:

Capture.jpg
 
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toddster

Curator of Broken Parts
Blogs Author
A guy who lives/cruises in Hawaii has decided to write down what he's learned in 50 years of sailing in the islands.

I haven't read it yet, no idea if it is good stuff or not, but might be worth a read.

Can be downloaded for free at https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwLo0m-1fK2bdkFnQ08xczloNG8 (you need a google account)

Bruce

Stolen from other thread.
edit: I didn't have any trouble downloading it without signing in. But as the author notes, it's intended for use on-line due to numerous hot links.
 
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toddster

Curator of Broken Parts
Blogs Author
Stealing again from another thread:

Found a site called "kubotabooks.com", which has PDFs of Kubota manuals available for free download.

http://kubotabooks.com/AutoIndex/

Under the "engines" directory, there is a service manual for the "70mm stroke" engines, which includes the D850/M25

http://kubotabooks.com/AutoIndex/index.php?dir=Engines/&file=70mm stroke enginemanual.pdf

...and one for the D950 motor (M25XP) which includes part numbers

http://kubotabooks.com/AutoIndex/index.php?dir=Engines/&file=D950 engine..pdf

Under the "tractor parts manuals" directory, the manual for the B1550D has parts diagrams for the D850/M25 motor (including the part numbers for specific serial-number ranges)

http://kubotabooks.com/AutoIndex/index.php?dir=Tractor Parts Manuals/&file=B1550D.pdf

There's also an owner's manual for the B1550 tractor (which uses the D850 motor) in the "tractor owners manual" director. Less germane, but still some bits of interest (eg, maintenance schedule)

Bruce
 
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