Nicolson I. Customizing Your Boat. Practical ideas for Improvements, Repairs and Fitting Out

New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1975. — 188 p. — ISBN: 0-442-26025-3.A single step leads down into the cabin of the boat I have just built for myself. The tread is of unvarnished teak because this wood is not slippery even when wet and the drips through the companionway will not rot it. Also it looks smart The side pieces are of a lovely creamy Honduras mafiogany, a lightweight, easily worked wood. They are well polished to prevent water penetrating, and the weight saving will give my yacht that millionth of a knot extra. No mass produced boat could have such complexities as two different woods with different finishes within the compass of a single step. The sink cover is of teak also it's an eighth of an inch too thick so that every few years I can plane off the surface, which doubles as a chopping board and gets marked with deep knife cuts. The screws which hold the tiepieces are just long enough to do the job. but short enough to avoid catching the plane blade if I cut away a little too much wood.
It is details like this that make my boat — or your boat — pleasant to own, a little bit safer and a tiny bit faster. That is one aspect of this book consolidated knowhow — small craft technology made easy to read and simple to apply. If a boat has a problem, there is a good chance that a solution lies within these pages. It may not be the precise answer, but it is likely to be enough to guide the owner or builder, or to suggest further ideas. Many problems are not new, and people from all over the world have invented, had brainwaves, been cunning, or applied a new idea to an old problem, or an old idea to a new one Where an answer does not appear here, there is a fair chance that it is in the earlier companion volume Designer's Notebook.
The thousands of builders, draughtsmen, managers, moulders, riggers, welders, mast makers, sail makers and thoughtful amateurs who assemble, repair, sell and generally look fter boats are the people who have really written this book, I have not been able to give credit where it is due except in a few cases, because so often an idea emerges in several places at the same time.
Many of these sketches have appeared in Yachts and Yachting and I am indebted to that magazine for permission to reproduce them here.