Customer Reviews

How to Design a Boat

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have accumulated a lot of boat books over the years, mainly on building and design. I really love this book. Mr Teale gives you a concise course on how to design a conventional boat. He doesn't try to turn you into a naval engineer in this little book, he just gives you enough info with no guff and not too much jargon.

What this book will let you do is understand the desisions taken by designers, understand what people are saying when they talk about boat technicalities, and if you want to it'll show you how to design a conventional yacht or motor boat.

If I have one complaint I'd have liked a bit more on multihulls, which are my particular interest.

The book is small, and cheap. I'm an engineer and I have struggled with the bulk information in some of the more comprehensive books. This one isn't as detailed but it has the important stuff and I'd say most people could follow it.

Really good!

Mr. Teale made a mistake in the way he organized this book and in the way he presents the subjects. Not that he makes mistakes in the concepts, but rather in the form.
He has chosen to present numerical methods whose origins, uses and explanations are not presented. He uses graphs, without any clue as to their origin and he packs several issues with no clear order to the reader. For someone already acquainted with the basics of yacht design, Mr. Teale has some teachings, but over all this is a difficult and obscure book on that beautiful art of designing a seaworthy craft.
I would suggest you start with other books and later - perhaps - take the chance with this one.

After restoring two sailboats, I think I am ready to design and build one. John Teale's book has been extremely helpful in providing me with the confidence to undertake this task. It is easy to follow and clear to understand. It would have been nice to have some examples on aspects like developable surfaces (in chine designs), or more background on the calculations to better understand where they come from. The book, however, flows through the design process with no difficulty.

Teale "presumes," "assumes," and "estimates" through much of the basic material, and refers to charts and graphs without a hint of where the data in those charts and graphs came from or how the charts were developed. Perhaps I'm below average in comprehensive skills, but I finished the book thinking the only people that can understand this book didn't need it in the first place. If you're starting from scratch as I am, it may frustruate you.

Excellent step by step technical approach - with a good practical balance to the engineering issues.

Being a complete novice I would like to see a visual of the hull with all features named to ease reference.

I look forward to another read!

Now in its third edition, How To Design A Boat is a straightforward guide written by John Teale, a professional designer of cruising yachts, fast powerboats, motor cruisers, and commercial craft. Black-and-white sketches and diagrams illustrate points in this technical and engineering resource delineating necessary measurements, mathematics, and theory required to create a seaworthy craft. How To Design A Boat is an important asset to any personal or professional Nautical Library reference collection.

This book I am sure is a very educational book although I find it very diffucult to understand. I am a first time boat builder in need of knowledge in design as well as the fundementels of the mathmatics associated with building. Very diffucult to follow

This book was exactly what I was looking for, brief but full of information on boat desing.
All the formulas have examples and are easy to understand and do. The book guided me on my own desing
and made it easy and fun.
I still keep it in my flightbag and review it in long airport sit, can wait to finish my own design
to see all the info from the book in practice.

I had an earlier copy of Teale's book on yacht design and this one is a fine update to a solid, no-nonsense approach on the basics of yacht design - or at least understanding the basics. Teale assumes you already speak the language of boats, but even so I don't know if there is quite enough granularity in this compact little tome for most of us to design one of today's complex high-tech, overly-intricate behemoths, but there certainly is enough to understand and put into practice the fundamentals... which like the sea, haven't changed much recently.

But Teale doesn't shy away from addressing the intricacies of modern materials and structures, and even if one never actually designs their own boat, grasping the fundamentals in How to Design a Boat will leave the skipper nicely equipped to outmaneuver the shoe-salesman masquerading as a yacht-broker, or the sincere but misinformed dock-expert. For the serious skipper, who has already acquired a nautical lexicon, and wanting to better understand his own craft, this is an first-rate book to have around -- its brevity and succinctly being a great asset. But it is also a great little tome from which to begin pondering actually building one's own boat - especially for a potential builder who is contemplating incorporating some of their own ideas into plans drawn up by other designers.

I am sure that Mr. Teale is great at designing boats, and he knows exactly what he is talking about. I found the book (as a beginner) to be non-understandable. It reminded me of my High School Physics teacher. He knew his subject and he understood everything he was talking about, but everything was way over the students heads and he could not understand why we did not understand his explanations. That is how I feel about this book. He refers to calculations and charts and graphs with no understandable explanation as to what you are looking at. I must be fair and say I only made it through the first 3 chapters because the deeper I got into the book, the more I realized how far it was over my head. Definitely not for the beginner who is looking for instruction on boat design. I will continue to look further to other books on boat design, maybe someone out there knows how to talk to a beginner. Perhaps later when I learn more about this subject, I will pick this book up and try again.