I love skinny little books. They are usually thought-provoking and insightful, with the basic premise not lost and buried under a barge-load of non-informative words. Happily, this one is no exception...
She was the sinking ship of all sinking ships: born sinking; the only sailing sieve on this or any other coast; a romantic but impossible craft.” The Boat That Wouldn’t Sink chronicles the...
This book is not just about maintaining a boat. To quote the author, “This book departs from the limited scope of similar books in that the author’s definition of boat maintenance includes...
SECOND IN A SERIES, BY PAT AND PAUL ESTERLE (CAP’N PAULEY VIDEO PRODUCTIONS, 2000; 22 MINUTES; $19.95 PLUS $3.50 SHIPPING AND HANDLING) VIDEO REVIEWED BY BILL DIMMITT, We’ve all been there...
Force 10: Wind speed 48 to 55 knots. Very high waves with long overhanging crests. The resulting foam in great patches is blown in dense white streaks along the direction of the wind. The whole surfac...
In the 7,000 years or so since humankind first discovered the joys of “messing about in boats” (in that immortal phrase from The Wind in the Willows), many lessons have been learned to inc...
As sailors to whom the thought of living on a boat is about as appealing as living in a dark and musty cave, we were wary of this latest guide to living aboard, assuming it would be yet another book t...
On a sunny Fourth of July, six high-school students and their instructor join author Randall Peffer aboard the schooner Sarah Abbott for the first of three cruises on Buzzards Bay. The students are pa...
Ever reach for a chart only to realize you left it at the pier? Had to go back to get it, which made you late and ruined your whole day? Captain Clay Kelley has checklists to keep that kind of thing f...
Cruising is often defined as “doing boat maintenance in exotic places.” If you’re planning to sail to Spanish-speaking countries in South America and the Caribbean, there is a new bo...
Time, speed and distance. Much of navigation starts with these basics, and Captain Jack starts with them, too. This book (really two, or maybe three, books in one) presents navigation in an easy-to-re...
Red sky at night, sailors’ delight. Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning. This little ditty is pretty useful, and the author of Marine Weather Forecasting knows it also; it’s short...
When we go to sea in good old boats, we go to enjoy the romance of sailing. In the preface to The Annapolis Book of Seamanship, John Rousmaniere says that to enjoy the romance fully, we must have R...
If I had to come up with an alternate title for this book, the only one that could do it justice would be Zen and the Art of Sailboat Maintenance. It has all the same elements: an epic journey, intell...
This is not your typical how-to book, as the title may suggest. While there is a well-presented discussion about rigging your canoe for sail, the author takes the reader on a brief romp through the hi...
Hal Roth is perhaps best described as an adventurer — but not the foolhardy type. Hal is also a storyteller extraordinaire. Fortunately for him and his wife, Margaret, who has supported his many...
Break. Break. Break. Staccato, rushed and emphatic, the words punched across the airwaves . . . “My wife’s gone . . . I was off watch and just got up . . . I don’t know what happened...
As a child growing up in Maine, one of my early memories was seeing the immense J-class boat, Ranger, sailing on Casco Bay. Gary Jobson’s annotated treatment of newly recovered photographs of Am...
In 1991, when Details of Classic Boat Construction first appeared (published by W.W. Norton), I rushed to get a copy. I wasn’t disappointed. Larry Pardey and his wife, Lin, built their cutter, S...
Dan Spurr, editor of Practical Sailor magazine, has written the book good old boaters (indeed, perhaps the world) awaited. Heart of Glass is the text that belongs on good old reference shelves everywh...
Charles and Corinne Kanter have taken a look at equipment needs and checklists, put them together with some personal cruising stories, and come up with a book that makes for interesting reading. Admit...
San Francisco is one of the top tourist destinations in the world. What better way to see the city and its environs than from your own cruising yacht? Bob and Carolyn Mehaffy, using many photos, chart...
Lovers of sailboats, the shapes of their hulls, and the shapes of their sails (no matter how many masts or how the sails are cut) . . . people who are caught immobile in contemplative reflection at th...
A book like this comes around rarely. It reads like a gothic novel but has all the research and facts of a court presentation. It is a true story, but its truth may be instinctively denied by the read...
Don Casey wants to make electricity as simple as possible. So in Sailboat Electrics Simplified, part of the International Marine Sailboat Library series, he omits extensive theory and keeps his explan...
It is nice to see a story about an older boat and one rich in history like Tristan Jones’s Sea Dart. I have followed some of Jones’s writing and knew he was quite an adventurer, one who ha...
To some modern navigators the admonition: “Do not rely on a single source of navigation” means they are safe with a second GPS receiver aboard. I remember one night sailing down the East A...
People who love to sail tend to dream. Any body of water, fresh or salt, and a little time on one’s hands can provoke compelling fantasies. Dreams played a significant role in the decision of Ch...
“You know, especially now, that life does not exist to be fair. It throws us obstacles to our well-being, as it’s supposed to. Who we are depends on how we handle those obstacles, how we d...
A camera is probably the only tool that Dee Carstarphen and her husband, Stu Hopkins, don’t use in telling the tale of a trip down the Intracoastal Waterway. Dee’s book, Narrow Waters: An ...
