Customer Reviews

How to Avoid Huge Ships

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I too was plagued by Huge Ship issues in my home town of Glastonbury until I found this book.

The author is clearly an expert with regard to Huge Ship identification and avoidance but the text misses some fundamentals. For instance, if the ship is viewed on the horizon, how is one to discover whether the ship is coming towards or moving away from the observer? More diagrams would be useful.

Will the author be following up this work with a more comprehensive treatise? We can only hope.

Only four stars I'm afraid as, even after studying this tome at length, I still managed to walk into a seagoing vessel of some considerable size.

Had the text been clearer I feel sure that this incident could have been avoided.

on finding about the existence of this book I immediately set off to purchase it. I, and my family, have been plagued by issues and tragedy from Huge Ship related incidents and I thought this would, finally, bring them to an end. Unfortunately as I approached the only local bookshop that had not sold out of this essential tome the shop was destroyed by a huge ship that came out of nowhere; If only the people that ran the bookshop had made time to read this book their livelihood could have been saved. I still live in despair but hope that others were able to access this book before too much damage was done to their lives.

Trimmer's book is deceptively simple, take his opening passage for example:

"when walking down a local thoroughfare, or perhaps on a day out to your local dock, and suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, a 40ft metallic compound hull emerges in your line of sight, it is most likely, if not definitely, going to be - a huge ship"

It's theoretical groundwork like this which lacks from today's 'pick and choose' postmodern discourse. Trimmer unleashes this devastating examination with relative ease; most interestingly with chapters such as "Avoiding the ship itself: Moving Left or Right?" which comes up with a flurried and meticulous deconstruction of ethics and theoretical obstacles, for instance "is there anything on either side of the huge ship? - if so, and there is, it is probably, if not definitely, going to be - difficult to move round to that side of the huge ship".

A must for those with an eye for Naval pragmatism and/or a small ship.

I was at a party recently doing my best to circulate, when I got stuck in the kitchen talking to one of the most boring Huge Ships I've ever come across. If I hadn't been rescued by my dear friend Lucy Tania, it could have been a disaster of titanic proportions. This book has helped enormously in improving my party mingling skills. The best £422.84 I've spent in some time.

Instead of falling into the same trap that other authors of this subject fall in to, such as "stay on land" or "move out of the way", John Trimmer offers thought provoking, deep insight into the complexities of Huge Ship avoidance.

If you or anyone you love plans on setting out to sea any time soon, and are worried about encountering a huge ship - then I cannot encourage you enough to read this book.

Thanks to this book i will never be hit by a huge ship again.

4 stars only because the author has not written a book about avoiding trains yet.

I've been plagued by huge ships all my life. Ever since I can remember. This book tells you all you need to know about avoiding these everyday hazards.

Now I can come and go with complete freedom. Even my weekly shopping is a pleasure!

As a recently retired Captain of a Huge Ship I'd just like to say how devastating this book was to my everyday life.
Haulage on the open seas used to be a pretty lonely and boring job but I always managed to amuse myself by crashing into significantly smaller vessels than my own... Sadly however, since this book was first published, I only ever managed to crash into one or two small boats per year... catalysing my retirement from the industry.

The release of the book has ruined my social life and all hopes of finding love. Everyone i know seems to now avoid me at all costs.

Firstly, let me say I am more than impressed both with the book, the condition, the delivery and the author. As a professional sea swimmer, when I saw this book I thought all my Christmases had come at once. "Finally," I said to myself, "a book that understands me, my needs and my profession!" The paragraphs are exceptionally put together, with such pearls of wisdom and occasional prophetic judgement being key to the overall tone of the book. The author, whose name I have forgotten, does not try to explain things the easy, uncomplicated way - for instance, if I was writing a paragraph under the heading "Left or Right? Which Way to Jump?" I'd probably come up with a sentence like thus: "It all depends on the angle the ship is approaching, it's approximate speed and the obstacles around you, which may prohibit your jumping to one side." - but instead goes for a more essayist, complicated and pre-modern approach, which is brilliant and rather intriguing. Apparantly, there are major theological and philosophical virtues and rules to follow to aptly "get out of the way of a large hulled boat and/or ship". Interesting, isn't it?

The only problem I have with the book is it focuses too much on the larger ships, and not the smaller ones - there have been various instances where I have nearly met my demise under dinghies or speed boats, no bigger than a small car. This book does not warn about these, and that is a pretty big downfall - I understand that the book was maybe written specifically for operators of smaller boats, their counterparts, or people walking on the docks (I mean, come on, I've seen "Speed 2: Cruise Control") but where is the thought for professional sea swimmers? There is none. That does hurt. The only thing I can think is that, to apply these complicated mathematical theories to smaller vessels, I must assume that they are the size of the bigger ones; but, does that cause me a problem? Is the movement time equal to the knots travelling divided by the number of people on board eating cake still applicable to smaller boats?! I don't know, but I have a feeling I'll find out in time.

EDIT: I did indeed find out and am currently in hospital. The doctors say it's a miracle I'm alive...I'm typing this with my tongue...MY TONGUE! It was one of those damn small boats, and the book gave me zero information on how to get out of the way of it, tried as I did to find the correct chapter. In light of this event, I'd like to take my review down a slight notch and not praise it as much.