Bookstores’ shelves start filling up with calendars and daybooks this time of year. For sailors, there are many to choose from, including ones featuring gorgeous photos of vintage ships or exoti...
In The Why Book of Sailing, author Scott Welty tackles the challenge of explaining the science of physics, as related to sailing — without the heavy concentration on mathematics that usually goes alon...
BY MARTIN CARTWRIGHT, ILLUSTRATIONS BY DON SEED (GLOVER’S YARD PUBLISHING, GREAT BRITAIN, 2007; 85 PAGES; $18.04) REVIEWED BY SUSAN LYNN KINGSBURY A Year in Flagrante is a collection of illustra...
In Hard Aground . . . Again, Eddie Jones sends dispatches from the creeks, mudflats and sounds of the Carolina coast. The chapters are gathered from his magazine columns and can be read as separate st...
Author Amy Wood stated that she wanted to write a book that told the true story — not one with fluff — and she indeed accomplishes this feat with World Voyagers, an all-encompassing detailed account o...
For those who have sailed a time or two and are committed to learning more about our favorite water-based activity, Bennett Marine Video has introduced a practical sail-training DVD that was first pro...
It is a true pleasure working with Don Launer as a member of the Good Old Boat team. His articles go back almost to our first issue, since it was very early in our formation that he discovered us. We ...
The Black Swan is a stew of a novel — like the stews the narrator cooks up on the century-old stove in the galley of the Black Swan, a 90-foot steel schooner from the turn of the 20th century plying t...
Ed and Helen Muesch have left a wide wake on the sea of experience. They have lived as farm workers in a commune, raising crops and animals. Later they joined the rat race of corporate America. Then, ...
Subtitled “A Treasury of Good Reading on Coastal and Inland Cruising,” this collection of excerpts from well-known to as-yet- unpublished authors is enjoyable cover to cover. Although they...
This is the fifth novel in Robert Macomber’s series of historical naval fiction, which begins around the time of the Civil War with At the Edge of Honor. I have loved these books for the evoluti...
Island of the Lost is the well-written account of the fate of two sets of castaways on the Auckland Islands in 1864 through 1865. Remarkably, neither knew of the other’s existence as both groups...
Dancing With the Wind. I can’t decide about this new video produced as a DVD…is it the romantic sunset scene or the easy galloping motion of a vessel described through music? Perhaps it’s ...
Joseph Conrad, the 19th-century novelist, was a master mariner whose life at sea was nearly as eventful as his novels. That is the premise of this exquisitely written biography of Conrad, which breaks...
Here is the story of an enthusiastic sailing couple and their five-year wander down the Atlantic Coast and through the Caribbean to Venezuela and back. You get the complete story, starting from their ...
This audiobook should come with a warning: may be life altering! It is inspiring to “look over the shoulder” of a recent immigrant lad as he proceeds quietly and surely to make his dreams ...
As a result of class and regatta handicapping requirements, the Marconi rig has more or less evolved into the default modern-day sail plan. But for many boatbuilders and sailors, a triangular jib pair...
Blue Water Odyssey is a top-notch “home movie,” in which the viewer is invited to share the adventure of a family’s five-year sailing voyage around the world. A wooden gaff-rigged Se...
In this volume, which includes a profusion of diagrams and photographs, Jean-Luc Pallas, professor of Recreational Mechanics at La Rochelle Technical College in France, provides a most valuable resour...
SYWNTB. After paging through Dictionary of Nautical Acronyms and Abbreviations, by Donald Launer, that’s my new acronym for Someday You Will Need This Book. Count on it. This book, published by ...
In order to encourage the design, building, and sailing of small seaworthy yachts, to make popular cruising upon deep water, to develop in the amateur sailor a love of true seamanship, and to give opp...
A man who owns 11 boats, six on one side of the Atlantic and five on the other, is either eccentric…or truly loves boats. Ian Scott, the author of Mudlark’s Ghosts, is the latter. His story of 1...
A practical test of whistles? Yup. It’s right there on page 184 in “Safety and Survival.” If you own a good old boat, you need this book. This book was created from articles publishe...
High seas adventure, piracy, kidnapping, political intrigue, an Irish Sea gale, and even a bit of romance…all this and more awaits the readers of A Ship’s Tale Jay Young tells a story about a gr...
When you see a book title like Cruising: The Basics, you would normally assume that it would cover ground about the cruising lifestyle: sailing from port to port, provisioning, and the sort of tips an...
In this lavishly illustrated volume, Jean-Luc Pallas, professor of Recreational Marine Mechanics at La Rochelle Technical College in France, has produced what I would regard as a “must-read̶...
BY JOHN VIGOR, AUDIOBOOK NARRATED BY THERESA MEIS (PRODUCED BY GOOD OLD BOAT, 2006; 2 HOURS; $15.00/DOWNLOAD, $19.95/MP3 CD, $24.00/AUDIO CD) REVIEWED BY MORGAN DOYLE, AGE 12. Sally Steals an Elephant...
It’s great fun to go cruising with Silver Donald Cameron. Through his books we’ve traveled with him several times, and each time has been a pleasure. Don’s tales of his voyages intro...
Mark: I finally made it and I’m glad I did! I’ve tried to read this book a couple of times before and never got through it. For some reason it just never caught and I’d end up puttin...
BY PAUL ESTERLE (CAPT’N PAULEY PRODUCTIONS, 2006; 261 PAGES; $28.95 USD) REVIEWED BY DAVE AULTFATHER Capt’n Pauley’s Boat Repairs and Upgrades is a collection of 78 short how-to arti...
