There are few if any subjects that generate more discussion and anxiety in the voyaging community than anchoring. And yes, there are any number of books out there that will tell you how to anchor well…or at least claim to. This Online Book is different…and better.
This book is for you if:
- You dread having to anchor.
- You head for a marina or mooring field when strong winds are forecast.
- Anchoring causes friction between you and your spouse and/or crew.
- You don’t sleep properly when anchored.
And even if none of that applies to you, you will still find useful stuff.
If you use the information in this Online Book you will get anchored and stay anchored.
Hi John
this is the best material I have every seen on anchoring.
how can I download the book because i need to be able to access it offline when in out of the way places.
Peter
Hi Peter,
Thanks for the kind words. There is no really elegant way to do that, we explain why here: https://www.morganscloud.com/2013/05/23/aac-bookclub/
Hi John,
I’m new to the site and am both impressed by and grateful for all of the insights to be found here. I would like to print out the books to review away from a device screen. Is there any way to print out a book in one go rather than print one chapter at a time. Thanks much.
Travis
Hi Travis,
Thanks for the kind words and welcome here. As to printing out the books, no we don’t have a system to facilitate that. We have looked at providing them via iBooks and Google Play so they could be read off line, but it’s a huge amount of work that would distract us from creating new articles and books. Also there is no way to include those ebooks within the membership so members would have to pay again, which does not seem fair.
So right now the best way to read the books away from a desk and in an easy chair is on a tablet and they are formatted to support that elegantly.
The other advantage of this approach is that it saves a lot of trees.
Here’s more of our thinking on this: https://www.morganscloud.com/2013/05/23/aac-bookclub/
Thanks John.
Hi John. I am a new member and really impressed about the quality and quantity of your work, and the contribution of your members too.
As all things in life there IS (or are) an elegant solution for this request, because I am sure you get this question asked a lot and I was also surprised to not be able to download your books in PDF format, especially because the tablet images are suggestive..
I believe you should be open to such requesst, off-line use of your product is just in it’s nature.
I think one of your main concerns would be copyright issues but there could be some good solutions, think about automatically rendering PDF’s with both member info (real name, email address) and author info on the pdf’s but also in it’s metadata. This would give you piece of mind and even a way to monitor if members keep your content for personal use. I mean no one would be so stupid to “share” his personal data in the public domain.
If you are interested I could send you a mindmap of my thoughts.
With a minimal investment of hiring a WordPress developer you could have a custom WP plugin which offers such a feature, for you just a few clicks to install and have the whole process automated.
Cheers and keep up the good work.
Anton
Hi Anton,
Actually automatically producing a downloadable book is a quite complex endeavour with a lot of code. I know this because we have been contributing to a plugin developer to do exactly that and he has been at it for over a year and is only just getting the plugin to the point that it will do the job without a lot of manual formatting.
As to copyright, adding buyer email to the book does not work that well. Again, I know this from experience with our Norwegian Cruising Guide where we tried just that but in the end were forced to go over to iBooks and Google Play because of rampant copying.
So if we do take this step, it will be in the form or a separate product and sold over iBooks and Google Play.
The bigger question is whether or not the distraction from our primary job of content creation of managing all this is worth it. Given that most everyone is online most places these days this could be a lot of work and distraction to solve a problem that’s going away anyway.
The other big problems with downloadable books are you can’t comment and how often do we update them given that are online books are very dynamic with us constantly updating, correcting, and adding to them?
John…..
Love the books and setup you have. As they are essentially a ‘living and growing version’ reading them online is just great for me.
Hi David,
That’s great to hear since we have sweated for years to get the presentation right. Still more to do, or course. Look for added features and improvement next winter.
Hi John! First, thank you for sharing all this real life knowledge.
I have to buy new docklines for our new to us 39 feet sailboat. I found some contradictory informations on the web. Could you give us your opinion on what length these lines should be?
Thanks!!