Customer Reviews

The Sailor's Illustrated Dictionary

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It should be called the Sailors Dictionary. (not illustrated dictionary) We just purchased our first sailboat and i was looking for illustrations and terms to enhance our sailboat terminology. There are very very little illustrations, maybe a dozen stick man type illustrations in the entire book. You have to know the word you are looking for.

I am writing this primarily because I noticed that as of this date, only one person has posted a review of THE SAILOR'S ILLUSTRATED DICTIONARY and she gave it one star. While I have to say I agree with her criticisms, I don't entirely agree with her rating, so I thought I'd weigh in on this book to give the perspective buyer a little more information to work with.

It is true that the claim of this book being "illustrated" is very weak, almost to the point of being fraudulent. In a book over 500 pages, there are only about 40 illustrations, and they are very simple diagrams, graphs or schematic-type drawings. It is also true that the way the book is organized it is almost useless for landlubbers like yours truly, because it is set up in a catch-22 sort of way, where you have to know the name of the thing you are looking for to get the definition. Obviously, if I knew the name of the thing, I wouldn't be looking it up, and since there are no labeled, fold-out master diagrams of boats and ships to work with, I can't do what I really need to do -- find a drawing of the thing and then identify it by its label. Had Captain Lenfestey thought of this, or had he been allowed to do it by the publisher, this book would have rated five stars instead of a paltry two.

I'm not sure if that entirely makes my point clear, so I'll give you an example. I have a book on airplanes, and for each airplane listed there is a numbered blueprint of the plane which labels every part. Thus, if I want to know what that pointy knob at the center of the propeller is, I can trace my finger down and see that it is called a "boss." Takes 3 seconds and solves the problem. Of course, Lenfestey is not merely describing parts of a ship (or boat) but also concepts, ideas, and other intangibles; so doing this would have required a total reorganization of the information. It would have been expensive, complicated and hard. But it also would have saved the book.

Now, despite these very serious flaws, the book is still useful if a) you have some pre-existing knowledge of nautical terminology, and/or b) you have other books which contain the type of labeled diagrams I mentioned. 8,500 terms is a lot of definitions, and if only the reader had the proper key to unlock the knowledge, he would find this a very useful manual. As it is, it's like a locked box with the key missing.