Reviews of current and new sailing titles
A definitive history of the Old Gaffers Association, both afloat and ashore, covering the various regional areas in a series of yarns that brings this colourful organisation to life on the page. One of our favourite OGA stories was when they staged their 50th Birthday celebrations in Cowes in 2013. "Remember," they told the organisers, [...]
This is a charming description of the challenge of attempting to be the first private vessel through the most northerly route of the Northwest passage, followed by cruising around Alaska and then back the following year. Polar Bound is a 48ft converted lifeboat specially reinforced to cope with the ice. This is done by David [...]
Part survival story and partly a spiritual journey through a horrifyingly grueling event, this book is not only a particularly eloquent survival story but it could even be perceived as a manual. Callahan built his own boat then set off across the Atlantic only to be sunk six days from leaving The Canaries. He then [...]
The story of the schooner fishery of the NE part of the United States of America and the Maritimes of Canada is one of danger, conquered by inspiration and innovation. As fishermen ventured further offshore to harvest the lucrative cod of the Grand Banks, and spent ever longer periods at sea they needed better vessels. [...]
There’s a bit of the Thames in many of us. I’ve lived alongside it, five doors upriver from the Tate Gallery, worked alongside it, sailed up the tidal bit, motored on the upriver bit, written about it, and messed about in boats all over it writes Peter Willis. The very word incites a frisson of [...]
This is the 4th edition of this now-established guide (it first came out over 10 years ago) and it continues to improve. Coverage has now been extended northwards to include Great Yarmouth (albeit discouragingly: “There is little to commend Yarmouth as a leisure port and we don’t recommend it as a port of last [...]
His name is still used as an exclamation of shock, surprise and even outrage – and with some justification. James Gordon Bennett, reckless, feckless playboy son of the owner of the New York Herald is both hero and anti-hero of this wild tale of a three-yacht Transatlantic race, the result of a drunken bet that [...]
The simple joys of owning a Twister (or similar well found GRP classic) are conveyed by Trevor Clifton on page 26 of this issue of CS (March 2016 No6), but if you enjoyed his tale of taking her south to Cape Horn and back and want to read a bit more on the subject then [...]
Page 3 of this informative book contains a list of all other titles by the same author. And there are 39 others (!) dear reader, dating back to 1971. Together they catalogue the disappearance and re-emergence of so many traditional coastal craft of the east coast, and the changing communities which kept and worked them. [...]
