use your noaa coast pilot

The Coast Pilot is a free (in digital form; $25 or so in print), available from NOAA, and probably one of the best navigation and piloting resources that a sailor can have.

There are several Coast Pilot volumes out there, covering any US waterway up and down the east and west coasts. Also included are US overseas territories such as America Somoa.

You'll get accurate and detailed information about the area that's covered. Specifically, for every navigable body of water and harbor, you'll get:

• Channels
• Depths
• General description
• Anchorages
• Bridges and cables
• Caution regarding aids to navigation
• Local weather
• Tides
• Currents
• Freshets
• Pilotage

If you don't want to carry the full printed version, at the minimum keep the digital PDF version your laptop, and use the Coast Pilot to research your routes and destinations.

short history of nearly everything

I've been hooked on this Bill Bryson book for a while. I got the recommendation from a really good friendf of mine, but this wasn't the exact book. Either way, it's really good and I look forward to reading the other soon as well.

It's A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, and I've been reading a chapter or two every night (and some mornings if I get a chance). It's a great book, and gives you a rather amazing view of, well, nearly everything.

If you're inquisitive and curious, you'll love this book. Highly recommended for both my fellow sailors and fellow software developers.

Eric's current book recommendations

I don't read as often as I should, but I've been trying to do more reading lately. To that end, here's what I've currently got in the works:

•  The Great Book of Amber. After completing His Dark Materials (which I consider to be one of the best trilogies, ever), I wanted something back in the fiction novel realm that I could zip through the pages on, but that would go on for a while. After finishing Harry Potter, I didn't really have a fiction-fantasy outlet, so hopefully Amber will take care of that. I read a lot of great reviews on it, it's 1200 pages long, and so far it seems pretty good. It's jumping a little too fast into fantasy land for me, but I think I had that same problem with earlier fiction books: the transition from my world to their world has to be something believable, and it takes some time to get used to the idea that a magic wand isn't totally stupid.
• Basic Economics. With sailing, if you don't understand the theory of how a sailboat operates, you're not going to get very far. You might be able to fake it for a while, but you'll be forever hamstrung by your lack of knowledge. The same holds true for our economy. Only when you really understand the underlying forces at work can you make smart and rational decisions. Written in a readable and engaging tone, this book should be required reading for everyone, period.
• It seems that everyone is reading The Kite Runner right now, and I need to be on the bandwagon! I actually haven't started reading it yet (Charlotte has), but the main reason I'm drawn to it is because it's a story told from Afghanistan that is not centered around the United States and our involvement there. Making a parallel to Basic Economics, before you start trying to dissect a complicated situation, you should understand the component parts. To understand the United States and Afghanistan, you need to fully understand both, and then after that discuss what happens when the two meet. Obviously a few hundred pages isn't enough to give you a full history of a country, nor does it try to do so, but any chance I can get to understand something outside the lens that I so often must look through, I'll take.
• Dreaming in Code. An actual book talking about what life is like, both personal and professional, in a large software development project. I haven't gotten to far into it yet, but honestly it's a little weird reading, because it hits so close to home. I've never read a book, or even met that many people to be honest, that I can relate to when it comes to software development. Speaking openly about growing up as a nerd, trying to walk the line between pushing yourself to new limits but also getting releases out the door, etc. And if you've ever worked on a big project before, you know that you really do "dream in code" sometimes.