This book is filled with all kinds of opportunities for teaching! There are science facts, letter writing, and letters about places from all over the world! This book has too much information to share it all! Using this book as a class reading will open up the possibilities for the teacher to teach about:

- Letter writing and writing in general

- Geography/History

- Different vocabulary words

- All types of word play

- Many different resources for text (newspaper, postcard, letter, telegram, etc)

- Creativity and design (the students could design their own crazy water fountain)

Reading Level: 

- Guided Reading= S

- Lexile = 830L

- Grades 4-5

- Chapter Book (138 Pages)

How do you provision and collect inventory to prepare a yacht to cruise - and what's the cruising life really like?

Topics Covered:
secrets of successful cruises
the cost of cruising
outfitting
provisioning
maintaining inventory
cooking at sea
personal comfort

Best Part: This book is not set up as an inflexible 'to do' list, but rather as an 'adapt it to you' list. The Shard's realise (for ex.) that everyone eats differently and simply using someone else's shopping list is unlikely to leave you happy.

So they describe in very useful detail how they tracked their own preferences ashore, and how they created systems to adapt those preferences to life on a boat. Then they teach methods to create your own systems that are geared to suit you best. Makes sense. I like it!

Wishes: While reading this, I wished I could have copies of the Shard's lists anyways as a good point to start from. Then I would adapt those lists for myself. And lo! They made that possible. There's info in the Appendix on how to order disks with their lists on it/them... but booo! They meant floppy disks.

It seems this book has not been updated since 1998. A quick check at the publisher's website does not list this book. So it doesn't look like you can still buy these disks, floppy or otherwise.

The book itself, however, is still available on Amazon, and it's info is timeless.

Conclusion: This was the first cruising 'text' I ever bought. It's still one of my favourites.