Rating: 
Summary: I wish I bought it before I bought my boat
Review: This is the book you should read before you buy a boat, before you make up your mind to go sailing, before you take that job and shove it.I like Jim's book a lot. It is opinionated - good, I was looking for opinions. He does favour the old woodies but that is because he has a lot of experience with them. My boat is "plastic" and I'm sure he wouldn't fire torpedoes at me if I were to offer cocktails. It is good about the philosphy of why you should go, or stay, and good with how to stash the necessary loot. I find most of these books biased towards the reasonably established crowd - 40-ish. Most of the books don't consider the cut-price option of shoe-horning yourself into a small, sturdy boat and roughing it a little. You don't need $100k+ to do this. It all depends on how much luxury you are prepared to sacrifice for your cause. Like most would-be cruisers, I thought owning the boat is the most important part of cruising. Wrong, wrong ... at least I like my boat but has sunk more money than it should have. I went cruising ... with about US$15k (give or take) of floating equity . We had a few problems in the 2 months or so we managed to sail for but it was all a hoot (except getting the engine out). The last problem put us ashore for the next year or so but it is entirely unrelated to cruising so we can't begrudge the boat for that one. We will be back. Terry from WA - the wiring diagrams are fine - get a fire extinguisher &/or electrician if you are a boat owner ;-). fair winds
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