Reviews of current and new sailing titles
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. [...]
It’s volume 5 of the Strong Winds series, but you get straight into the story even if you have not read the other books. The novel is based around teenage dinghy sailor Xanthe and some very odd goings on around boats on the East Coast, covering Second World War history, Dunkirk Little Ships and pill [...]
With clean earlier editions of this classic on yacht design becoming rare it’s great to have a reprint from Lodestar, with forewords by both the late Ed Burnett and Ian Howlett (who prefaced the fourth edition in 1994). There is also a plans supplement and biography by THB’s late daughter Joan Jardine Brown. This edition [...]
By Derek Aslett This very successful book has now been re-issued in its third edition, and is bang up to date – for instance it includes a photo of the spinnaker tower in Portsmouth with its awful blue and gold paints, and also includes a photo of the new breakwater just off Cowes. But the [...]
by Edgar Allan Poe (his only novel) When you combine a boyhood seafaring fantasy with a horror writer you get a gory shock-fest from one of the world’s best horror writers. Cannibalism, betrayal, mutiny, monsters and gore. His insight into sailing is very well researched and interestingly the South Pole hadn’t been reached at the [...]
by Michel Olagnon What a pleasure to have something very technical broken down into easy bites and then put together in an attractive and exciting volume beautifully illustrated with ancient Japanese paintings and the best worldwide marine artists and photographers. But this is not just pleasure. If every yachtsman and seafarer were aware of the [...]
by Sue Whisstock Whisstock’s boatyard has been a feature of the Woodbridge, Suffolk, waterfront since 1926 when the 23-year-old Claude Whisstock drained some marshland and built his workshop. The yard became phenomenally successful, building a wide variety of boats, including its own Maxwell Blake-designed Deben 4 Tonner. It worked closely with many notable designers, especially [...]
By Mike Peyton The late Mike Peyton enjoyed the sobriquet of the “World’s greatest Yachting Cartoonist” and here is why... This is a second edition of the story of his life in boats, from his first cartoon to becoming a householdname for yachting families. And, as always, the cartoons speak for themselves. £14.99 Pub Fernhurst [...]
We sailors see the sea as connecting, rather than separating us, and so does Tom Blass who travelled around and across the North Sea to discover its people and ways of life. Coastal communities, both British and continental, come under his benign and intrigued scrutiny. PW £20.00 Bloomsbury
