I subscribe to Passage Maker Magazine and this month's issue had an article on building a custom owner's manual for one's boat.
Now as folk's get older, and now that I am to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln "Four score and eleven years old," It struck me how valuable a custom owner's manual for one's boat would be. As some of you may recall, I had a laminated skematic created and installed on the inside of one of my battery doors.
The article got me thinking about the intrinsic value of such a manual while my wife and I own the boat, and when it becomes necessary for us to sell our boat how it it might speed to a sales process, certainly add value (monetary and/or intrinsic), and increase any buyer's confidence in the boat and it's history.
Being pragmatic, I also see how much easier it will be for my wife to deal with the sale of the boat, if in the words of William Shakespeare "Slip my mortal coil. " That is such is a poetic way of saying "to die" or "to leave one's body". The phrase comes from Hamlet, where it appears in the famous "To be, or not to be" soliloquy as "shuffle off this mortal coil".
Now this article was geared towards offshore sailing but it works well as a starting point .
As a bonus I have a good starting point with our build thread being here on BCSF.
So without further ado, here is the article from PassageMaker
So, when you need to know what the maroon wire going into the grimfackle does, you have to paw through piles of disorganized paper. If you need to know what the oil pressure gauge should be showing, another search. Finding a parts list for the head or a list of authorized repair shops for the VHF radio means rooting around in that mystery drawer.
Start your organizational project by, well, organizing. Sort all the papers into categories that you can understand: engine, electronics, galley and so forth. As you go, keep notes of the missing items.
You can often track down these items on the internet, often on manufacturers’ websites. Be sure you get the specifics right. Don’t just look for “9-kW Onan generator manual.” Instead, use the ID plate on the generator to determine that you need a manual for the MDKDL-IP Onan genset.
I once sailed on a long ocean race aboard a yacht that had a go-to book with photos and details of the masthead. If I had to go aloft (which happened daily), I would know not only what to expect, but also what tools to stick in the bag of the bosun’s chair. That book eliminated the need to shout down from the masthead to “send up a larger wrench!”
Other people may need to use these manuals you’re making. A guest may not know that spare fuses for the electronics are in a specific salon drawer, or that the flares are in the navigation table. What questions would your family ask if you were too busy to chase something down?
This brings us to checklists. As a pilot, absolutely everything I do in the cockpit is covered by a checklist: pre-start, takeoff, before landing, after landing, shutdown. This process may seem embarrassingly simple, but even if you don’t have memory problems, you can find yourself forgetting things. I won’t even tell you how many times I’ve forgotten to put the drain plug in the stern of the tender before launching it. Keeping a checklist in the manual makes it accessible for the entire crew if you’re off-watch and napping.
Choose how you want to organize your manual. I used three-ring binders because I don’t entirely trust electronics to store that information. But no matter how you make the manual, use it. Your manual is useless if you don’t avail yourself of it regularly, and it’s a hindrance if you don’t keep it updated as you change wiring, plumbing, systems or stowage locations.
Trust me on this: There’s nothing more satisfying than thinking the oil pressure seems a bit high, and then opening the manual and knowing in an instant that I don’t have a problem.
This article was originally published in the April 2024 issue.
Now as folk's get older, and now that I am to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln "Four score and eleven years old," It struck me how valuable a custom owner's manual for one's boat would be. As some of you may recall, I had a laminated skematic created and installed on the inside of one of my battery doors.
The article got me thinking about the intrinsic value of such a manual while my wife and I own the boat, and when it becomes necessary for us to sell our boat how it it might speed to a sales process, certainly add value (monetary and/or intrinsic), and increase any buyer's confidence in the boat and it's history.
Being pragmatic, I also see how much easier it will be for my wife to deal with the sale of the boat, if in the words of William Shakespeare "Slip my mortal coil. " That is such is a poetic way of saying "to die" or "to leave one's body". The phrase comes from Hamlet, where it appears in the famous "To be, or not to be" soliloquy as "shuffle off this mortal coil".
Now this article was geared towards offshore sailing but it works well as a starting point .
As a bonus I have a good starting point with our build thread being here on BCSF.
So without further ado, here is the article from PassageMaker
So, when you need to know what the maroon wire going into the grimfackle does, you have to paw through piles of disorganized paper. If you need to know what the oil pressure gauge should be showing, another search. Finding a parts list for the head or a list of authorized repair shops for the VHF radio means rooting around in that mystery drawer.
Start your organizational project by, well, organizing. Sort all the papers into categories that you can understand: engine, electronics, galley and so forth. As you go, keep notes of the missing items.
You can often track down these items on the internet, often on manufacturers’ websites. Be sure you get the specifics right. Don’t just look for “9-kW Onan generator manual.” Instead, use the ID plate on the generator to determine that you need a manual for the MDKDL-IP Onan genset.
I once sailed on a long ocean race aboard a yacht that had a go-to book with photos and details of the masthead. If I had to go aloft (which happened daily), I would know not only what to expect, but also what tools to stick in the bag of the bosun’s chair. That book eliminated the need to shout down from the masthead to “send up a larger wrench!”
Other people may need to use these manuals you’re making. A guest may not know that spare fuses for the electronics are in a specific salon drawer, or that the flares are in the navigation table. What questions would your family ask if you were too busy to chase something down?
This brings us to checklists. As a pilot, absolutely everything I do in the cockpit is covered by a checklist: pre-start, takeoff, before landing, after landing, shutdown. This process may seem embarrassingly simple, but even if you don’t have memory problems, you can find yourself forgetting things. I won’t even tell you how many times I’ve forgotten to put the drain plug in the stern of the tender before launching it. Keeping a checklist in the manual makes it accessible for the entire crew if you’re off-watch and napping.
Choose how you want to organize your manual. I used three-ring binders because I don’t entirely trust electronics to store that information. But no matter how you make the manual, use it. Your manual is useless if you don’t avail yourself of it regularly, and it’s a hindrance if you don’t keep it updated as you change wiring, plumbing, systems or stowage locations.
Trust me on this: There’s nothing more satisfying than thinking the oil pressure seems a bit high, and then opening the manual and knowing in an instant that I don’t have a problem.
This article was originally published in the April 2024 issue.
