PRACTICAL SKIPPER
I have to confess, I do sometimes wonder how many of these books the reading public can absorb – but they keep coming, partly because of new blood in the sport, and partly because of changes in techniques progressing with experience and technology. This one is quite nifty actually. The blurb describes it as “the notes you wish you’d written when you attended your sailing course” and that’s pretty much what it is. The book is supremely clear and easy to navigate and one of the best features are the checklists, to stop you forgetting something important that you last might have heard in a classroom decades ago. It’s also sensibly priced. The author, rather impressively, is a Cambridgeeducated engineer who packed it all in to go sailing and stopped counting after 50,000 sea miles. He is also author of the well-known
Reeds Crew Handbook.