Books+Media

Zen and the Art of DIY

by Rebecca Waters, Posted November 20, 2008

In one of the best-written and most enjoyable boatbuilding books I’ve read—and I’ve read a few—author and journalist Larry Cheek provides the perfect blend of research and memoir. With little experience of either sailing or woodworking, he decides to build a wooden sailing dinghy from a set of plans by Sam Devlin, a designer of wood/epoxy stitch-and-glue small boats. What follows combines gentle

Dave Barry, Watch Out

by Elizabeth Wrightson, Posted June 20, 2008

We sailors rarely have to defend our sport because, well, we avoid arguing with nonsailors. Still, the occasional skirmish does occur, usually within range of a glass of something. “A bargument,” says Doug Hanks, “is a debate with no right or wrong answer, simple enough to discuss after three beers”—for example, Who would win in a war between California and Texas?When Hanks met up with

Picture Perfect

by Rebecca Waters, Posted June 19, 2008

With stunning marine photography and a nautical quote for every day of the year, Sailor’s Wisdom makes a great addition to any sailor’s library. In this impressive coffee-table tome, Philip Plisson—an acclaimed maritime photographer with over 400,000 photographs and 40 books under his belt—captures the many moods and aspects of the sea and those who live and work around it. From

I Am Legend

by Charles Mason, Posted April 20, 2008

With AutoCAD and computational fluid dynamics now casting long shadows across the field of sailboat design, it’s important to go back and learn how the game started, who the leading practitioners were, and what craft came from their drawing boards. There couldn’t be a better tour guide than L. FrancisHerreshoff for this particular magical journey into the past. He was a son of Captain Nat,

Pick Up and Go

by Rebecca Waters, Posted April 21, 2008

We’ve all dreamed of traveling the world—not just a quick vacation, but a real globe-trotting adventure. For most of us, the realities interfered with the dreams. How do you finance a year of travel, where should you go, what is the best way to get there, and what do you do about visas, vaccines, and viruses? In The Practical Nomad, Edward Hasbrouck—renowned travel writer and ex-travel

Meltdown

by David Schmidt, Posted March 19, 2008

Adventure annals are rife with mystery. Take George Mallory and Andrew Irving’s 1924 Mount Everest attempt; the two vanished, their fate murky until their mummified corpses were recently found. In sailing, what happened to Donald Crowhurst (and why) during the 1968–69 Golden Globe Race, the first nonstop solo-circumnavigation race, is equally ambiguous. His boat, Teignmouth Electron, was

Liquid Logic

by Sail Staff, Posted March 20, 2008

Maritime journalist Dallas Murphy is on a quest to quell the alarmists, debunk the deniers, and depolarize the global-warming debate with an active, intelligent discussion of how man-made changes to the ocean ecosystem can have a lasting effect on the earth’s climate. To Follow the Water is a conversation starter that navigates readers through the annals of oceanography, catalogues the

Sailing Primer

by Sail Staff, Posted February 20, 2008

I well remember the first time I went to sea on a cruising boat. Uncertain of what would happen next, I always seemed to be in the wrong place. The deck was a mass of ropes, the terminology—which sounded like Greek to me—was all unfamiliar, and I was probably more of a liability than a help. I enjoyed myself tremendously. Reading whatever books I could lay my hands on, I tried to become more

Sea Change

by Sail Staff, Posted February 20, 2008

When Mary South quit her job, sold her house, and floated her life’s savings on a 40-foot steel-hulled trawler, she abandoned her landlocked reality in search of adventure, purpose, and peace at sea.The Cure for Anything Is Salt Water is South’s account of her transformation from successful publishing executive to eager seamanship student to beaming skipper aboard her newly

Review Special: DVDs

by Rebecca Waters, Posted November 20, 2008

Distant Shores: Cruising the Middle East, a sailing documentary produced by Paul and Sheryl Shard, allows you to enjoy the discovery of new places and cultures from the comfort of your own couch. This three-disk DVD set includes thirteen 30-minute episodes of their sailing-adventure TV series and contains some excellent sailing footage; the focus is on exotic destinations rather than