Books reviewed by Paul Talbot

Fibreglass Boat Repairs Illustrated by Roger MarshallFibreglass Boat Repairs Illustrated

by Roger Marshall
published by International Marine / McGraw-Hill
RRP $42.95 (184pp; 275mm x 215mm)
Some time ago, the Gold Coast’s Jeff Webster had some good ideas in his magazine, Secondhand Boat Workshop, where he detailed some interesting repair work on fibreglass boats (among other things). Now McGraw-Hill has published in March this year a complete guide to fibreglass repairs.
From simple tasks, such as fixing gouges, dings and cracks to descriptions of major repairs from grounding or collision damage, Fibreglass Boat Repairs Illustrated makes the jobs of DIY or supervising someone else a whole lot more achievable.
Illustrated is exactly what this book is. It starts with a very descriptive chapter on exactly how fibreglass boats are built, stepping through the processes from building moulds to demonstrating hull to deck joints. The second chapter identifies the damage to a boat, with clear colour photos showing everything from improperly installed impeller damage to blistering, grounding, deck and rudder damage and so on. Then come the tools and repair materials and the ‘how to’ chapters.
It is an impressive book, which, while it mightn’t give you the skills and confidence to carry out a repair, will certainly allow you to be a knowledgeable overseer.

The Complete Book of Australian Weather by Richard WhitakerThe Complete Book of Australian Weather

by Richard Whitaker
published by Allen and Unwin
RRP $39.95 (175pp; 280mm x 215mm)
There have been a number of times that a bank of clouds have made me wish for a deeper knowledge of what they were trying to tell me. I remember roaring up the Sydney coast from Port Hacking on a race ending under the Harbour Bridge. Spinnaker set for most of the way up to South Head, we were clearly running into a front approaching from the north. We’d rounded South Head and flew into the harbour to be confronted by two Saturday afternoon fleets – one running with the Southerly heading towards us under spinnaker and the other coming from Manly, also with spinnakers set. That was not a set of circumstances that was going to last long.
Now, in his new book, Richard (better known as Dick) Whitaker, sets out to help us understand Australia’s weather in such a way that I would have been able to explain to my fellow crew on that particular day, just what we were observing and why it was happening. Too late for me now, but not too late for you.
The Complete Book of Australian Weather explains the science of Australia’s weather in, well, not exactly words of one syllable, but in a way that is easy to understand. Weather, of course, confounds us illiterates at the same time as leaving the experts sometimes with a little egg on their collective faces. But at least our weathermen and women are working from a highly educated and scientific basis.
Dick Whitaker takes a complicated subject and breaks it down into manageable bites. He introduces us to the worldwide phenomena that drive the weather and draws a ‘Big Picture’ of what happens both around the world and within the Earth’s atmospheric layers. Then he downsizes to smaller-scale weather patterns and their cloud formations.
It is not unexpected that our author would visit the fraught science of weather forecasting and his explanations reveal that the science and technology of forecasting are now at their most modern and effective. The book continues with explanations of Australia’s climate, its weather disasters and the observable and measured effects of climate change over Australia’s recent past.
The Complete Book of Australian Weather is not a technical science book, although it does not shy away from science. It is, however, a book that reduces the technical detail to digestible facts that go far in giving its readers a better understanding of this complex subject.