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Books and DVDs
Book Review: Conquering the Pacific
Andrés Reséndez, Mariner Books, $28 Conquering the Pacific is a rich historical narrative that tells the story of the last great discovery of the Age of Sail—the vuelta, or the return voyage from Asia to the Americas. Though many attempts had been made, all had ended in failure. ...read more
Book Review: Sailor Song
Sailor Song is the ultimate guide to the music of working sailors during the 18th and 19th centuries. The book includes lyrics and sheet music for 50 of the most beloved sea songs with fascinating historical background on the adjoining page. Chapter introductions provide ...read more
Book Review: Cruising Club of America, Great Lakes Station
Reviewed by Amanda Balasubramanian As we were preparing for our first significant offshore passage in 2013, I read every book on ocean sailing I could find. However, while there were a number of helpful books full of technical information, I also longed for the personal stories ...read more
Book Review: The Figure 8 Voyage
“What is the color of the ocean that rolls beneath Pacific trades? How does a wave curl and crash at 47 degrees south? Can an albatross remain awing in the worst of weathers?” Randall Reeves has always found images to be the most compelling part of the stories we tell about the ...read more
Book Review: Sailing Into Oblivion
Sailing Into Oblivion by Jerome Rand $15.99, available through Amazon As refreshing and inspiring as Jerome Rand’s 2017-18 solo-circumnavigation may have been, his account of the voyage in the book Sailing Into Oblivion: The Solo Non-Stop Voyage of the Mighty Sparrow may be even ...read more
Book Review: One-Pot Wonders
James Barber Harbour Publishing, $14.95 I’ll bet a filet mignon against a can of Dinty Moore that almost every cruising cook has read and discarded a goodly number of seagoing recipe books. Some are so simple as to be insulting. Others require too many exotic and perishable ...read more
Book Review: Three Sheets to the Wind
From the casual sailor to the lover of linguistics, everyone is sure to find something to fascinate them in this entertaining little book. Three Sheets to the Wind unpacks the etymology of modern words and idioms derived from nautical terms. Part trivia, part reference and part ...read more
Book Review: The Trade Wind Foodie
Author of a definitive series of pilot books and cruising guides for the Mediterranean, Rod Heikell and his wife, Lou, embarked on a circumnavigation during which they amassed not only a host of anecdotes but a bookload of recipes based around the produce of the landfalls they ...read more
Book review— Stress-Free Sailing: Single and Short-handed Techniques
Briton Duncan Wells is a Royal Yachting Association (RYA) instructor and runs a sailing school, which gives him the chops to produce this excellent book on close-quarters sailboat handling for the crewless. Packed with photographs, diagrams and step-by-step procedures for just ...read more
Book Review: Sailing to the Edge of Time
An accomplished sailor and writer, Kretschmer tells the poignant, yet relatable tale of a lifetime’s love of sailing in his new book Sailing to the Edge of Time. Beginning with his first fateful trip around Cape Horn in a 32ft sloop named Gigi, Kretschmer takes readers with him ...read more
Book Review—Uncharted Waters: Romance, Adventure, and Advocacy on the Great Lakes
Mary McKSchmidt’s new memoir tells the honest and impactful story of finding purpose through sailing and advocacy. As a young successful businesswoman, she was taught to sail by her soon-to-be-husband, Rubin. Not only that, but while she fell in love with the ...read more
Davis Instruments: Quick Reference Cards
CHECK THESE If you’re sailing with new crew this summer or your kids have suddenly and inexplicably started to look up from their phones and take an interest in the finer points of cruising, these Quick Reference Cards from Davis are a great way to further their boating ...read more
Book Review: Chasing the Cup
BMW Oracle Racing’s 2010 ascent to America’s Cup glory with Jimmy Spithill at the helm may be one of the best-known tales in the annals of modern sailing, but you haven’t heard it like this before. Spithill’s autobiography, Chasing the Cup, is a must-read for anyone following ...read more
Book Review: Second Wind
Nathaniel Philbrick Amidst today’s tales of high-tech yacht design and the pros battling it out in seemingly impossible conditions, Second Wind is the gorgeously simple story of a man who loves two things: his boat and his family. A former Sunfish champion and author of the ...read more
Book Review: The Atlantic Crossing Guide
Jane Russell & the RCC Pilotage Foundation If you have a yen for sailing across the Pond to explore the delights of Northern Europe or the Mediterranean, you’d best do some homework first. There’s no better primer than this weighty tome, now in its 7th edition. It’s crammed with ...read more
Book Review: After 200,000 Miles
I think anyone who has sailed more than 200,000 miles has earned the right to reflect, inform, advise, entertain and encourage other sailors, and that is just what Jimmy Cornell does with this lavishly illustrated 400-page book. Appropriately subtitled “A Life of Adventure,” ...read more
Book Review: Marine Diesel Basics
By Dennison Berwick (Voyage Press, $15.99) If you’re not mechanically inclined, even the simplest maintenance tasks on a diesel engine and its associated paraphernalia can be daunting. There are plenty of books on the subject, but many of them assume a certain level of knowledge ...read more
Book Excerpt: Sea Trial
September 19, 1974, 0400. The 40ft sloop Vela rocked gently, lines creaking with the steady motion of following seas. City lights glowed on the distant horizon like a beacon marking their destination: Suva, the capital of Fiji. After five days of sailing from the tiny island ...read more
Book Review: Heavy Weather Tactics (Second Edition)
An acknowledged expert in the study of drogues and sea anchors (not the same thing, as is clearly explained), Earl Hinz has written a comprehensive and thoroughly enjoyable analysis of drag devices and their practical application. Deploying a drag device to “park” and stabilize ...read more
Book Review: Knot for Sailors Only by Bill Harmon
In this comprehensive collection of short stories and poems, lifelong sailor Bill Harmon reveals how time spent on the water can affect time spent on land. With three decades of sailing experience, he has no shortage of adventures to share. Through Harmon’s original writings on ...read more
Book Review: Finding North by George Michelsen Foy
In the opening chapter, appropriately titled “Fear,” author George Michelsen Foy makes a compelling point about navigation: “From the start, staying alive has depended on navigation: the art of figuring out our position and in which direction to travel.” In fact, he’s referring ...read more
Book Review: Skippering a Small Keelboat by Grant Headifen
SKIPPERING A SMALL KEELBOAT Here, author Grant Headifen introduces a new kind of learning style, the hybrid eBook. Scan the QR codes in each chapter and you are taken to online graphics, animations and tutorials that help you grasp the concepts quickly and easily; it’s almost ...read more
Books for Sailors
The thud of a book landing on a desk is a rare pleasure in this digital age, much more satisfying than the ping of an email or text alert. Kindle has its place, but there’s nothing like paper to get a lasting message across. Good sailing fiction is a rare commodity these ...read more
Dream Cruise Destinations by Vanessa Bird
Armchair Sailor A new book from Vanessa Bird, Dream Cruise Destinations, is sure to keep you dreaming of blue water and gentle breezes, even when the snow is falling and the winter winds are howling. The book outlines 20 cruises that are fully mapped, measured and budgeted, ...read more
Sailing Books
Curl Up With Two GReat Books What’s the next best thing to curling up with a copy of SAIL magazine on a snowy winter’s day? Why, curling up with a good book, of course! Holiday shoppers have two gorgeous titles to choose from this year in Ranulf Rayner’s The Story of the ...read more
Reviewed: ActiveCaptain for iPhone/iPad
In SAIL’s June issue, we reviewed 10 of the best apps for navigation (“Navigating the App World”). One thing I emphasized was the importance of an app being able to use data from ActiveCaptain. But what is ActiveCaptain and how does it work? ActiveCaptain is a popular ...read more
Six New Reads for Summer
There’s nothing like a good book, whether you’re on passage or just hanging out in the cockpit at the marina. For those in search of a summer read, there are a number of great new titles to choose from. Of course, no list of marine titles would be complete without some storms ...read more
Book Review: An AC34 Victory Lap
It didn’t take long for America’s Cup fans Diane Swintal, longtime cupinfo.com contributor Robert Kamins and photographer R. Steven Tsuchiya to put together their take on the 34th America’s Cup, and the result—Winging It: Oracle Team USA’s Incredible Comeback to Defend the ...read more
Sailing Hits the Big Screen
This past year has been unusual in that there have been, by my count, five films released that focus on sailing and the sea. Even better, three are actually worth watching! The best two are a pair of documentaries that were created and released by independent filmmakers. ...read more
What Knot for iPhone/iPad, by Columbia Sportswear
As sailors, we’re constantly calling upon our personal repertoire of knots. We master a few common ones and, sometimes, learn knots that are more advanced or serve a more specific purpose. For instance, suppose you need to secure your dinghy to the foredeck. What knot would you ...read more
Distant Shores TV Show
Paul and Sheryl Shard have been exploring the world under sail together since 1989. Along the way, they decided to use their television backgrounds to create a travel-based series called Distant Shores. The show launched in the late 1990s and today, it airs internationally on The ...read more
Top 5 Apps for 2013
Since October of 2012, I’ve been using this space to review smartphone apps for SAIL readers. I’ve looked at the best apps for AIS, anchoring and navigation. I’ve tested new apps for boat logs, knot-tying and chartplotting. And when I wanted to send a postcard of my boat from a ...read more
Photographer Onne Van der Wal's latest book, Sailing
The Essence of Sail Take a break from winter’s chill with renowned sailing photographer Onne Van der Wal in his latest book, Sailing. In this breathtaking volume, Van der Wal captures the essence of the pastime through some 200 images taken around from the world, in places such ...read more
Book Review: The Sinking of the Bounty
If you Google HMS Bounty, the now-perished tall ship’s website, tallshipbounty.org, still appears as the fifth search result with a description of the historic vessel underneath. Click on the link though, and you’re led to a blank white page. It’s an eerie reminder of the tragic ...read more
Aquatic AV's Waterproof Digital Media Locker
Keep your digital music safe and dry while playing it offshore with Aquatic AV’s new Bluetooth-capable waterproof Digital Media Locker. The locker keeps most any digital music-playing device safe while allowing you to wirelessly select and play music from anywhere on board. ...read more