Essentials of seamanship for cruising

by John Watney

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0890093385
• ISBN13: 9780890093382
• Release Date: January 1980
• Publisher: Chartwell Books
• Length: 168 Pages
• Weight: 3.00 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A useful classic for the family skipper managing a crew

I was surprised at how fresh this book still is 23 years after its publication date. It emphasizes the basics of seamanship for amateurs sailing under-35 foot fiberglass keelboats, without wasting print on the special problems of antique wooden vessels or electro-furling moneysailers. Most of us will relate to the hardware and rigging illustrated in the photos because most of us are still sailing boats exactly like these. Though written for a British audience it deals with typically European sailing problems in a universal fashion; the discussion of docking or mooring in tidal surge areas, a necessary tedium found in most British books, was general enough to be useful for sailors in, say, Atlantic Canada. Each chapter focuses on how a couple or family would split duties and what each crew member should do as other operations take place, a unique format that makes this older book a must for the bookshelf of the family skipper struggling to sort out the process of sailing with crew.