THE DECK MANUAL
You've got questions. We've got answers.
Is this book just for new deckhands? What about bosuns or junior officers?
While this book was designed to be understood by someone with zero experience, it still has lots of value to offer more experienced deckhands, bosuns, and even junior officers.
As you progress in your career, you will start supervising the operations this book discusses. It’s helpful to have a reference guide/ checklist to ensure you don’t forget anything and are aware of all the risks associated with a task or procedure. This book does just that.
And if the supervising goes well, someday, you will be writing and implementing your own SOPs! This book can serve as a useful guide for that process, as the style that the operations and procedures are discussed in this book is similar to the way SOPs are written.
While good boats sometimes have systems in place to train new crew, the reality is that most on the job training is informal, unstructured, and pretty ‘casual’. Sure, you will learn all this naturally eventually, but, unless you are VERY lucky, it will probably happen over the course of a few years.
This book is designed to give you a head start, and also to accelerate the learning process.
When you join a boat, there is a lot you will be expected to learn. And you will be expected to learn it quickly. You can’t always take notes in the moment, and sometimes it can be hard to keep up. If you read this book beforehand, a lot of the mental workload (and stress!) will be much easier to handle when the time comes.
Won't I be taught this on the job?
With 30+ illustrations, this book was created with just that in mind! These illustrations help explain complex topics and procedures, and make the book an interesting, engaging read.
