books to help learn how to sail

We took organized courses to learn how to sail. While I knew some people who sailed, they either did not have the time to be instructors or were not likely to be particularly good ones. A few of them also did not have a sense of safety anywhere near my wife's. Sailing courses seemed sensible to try to gain her confidence in the whole venture. While she is a good sailor, she still is a reluctant one. But the courses helped a lot.

We took our first course on Lake Lanier from Lanier Sailing Academy and additional courses from Offshore Sailing School. I can't say one school was better than the other, just different. That's probably true for other schools as well.

A cruising course in the British Virgin Islands was quite helpful. We had been sailing with friends for a week in Rhode Island before taking the course, but the course focused on teaching us what to expect when we went sailing on our own. While there were some exciting bits during our first trip alone, it went reasonably well. The course helped.

For learning how to sail, the U.S. Sailing Association and American Sailing Association books written for their courses are very informative. The book on the left is the first book in the U.S. Sailing Association series. It was news to me when I studied it. (That's another way of saying the book was very informative.) I used the books in on-the-water courses and can't speak about how informative they are without an instructor helping you sail at the same time. In combination with good to outstanding instructors, I have learned a lot from them.

Colgate (1978, 1996) is an outstanding summary of information on how to sail and sail well. Some friends gave me this book, and I have read and reread it. There is a lot in it about all aspects of sailing. I learned some things on my initial reading and have learned more as time goes on.

Marshall (1996) and Siminoff (2001) are books that I happened to buy in bookstores and are interesting to read. Both include some sailing tips that I have not found elsewhere. That said, if you are like me and can't go sailing every weekend, it is hard to absorb helpful sailing hints from a book and put them into practice.

We seem to be into learning most things the hard way. It is said that sailing is a combination of hours of supreme bliss and moments of sheer terror. It does seem to work out that way. The bliss part is unbelievable. The terror part is not so great. (My wife agrees with this description of sailing.)

Since we go sailing for a week or so once a year, I have gotten more value out of focusing on one skill each year. For example, one year I focused on weather. Now you might say that learning about the weather in a benign environment like the Caribbean is not exactly hard. In my defense, we go during the Summer when one tropical wave follows another. It is helpful to have a better understanding of their significance in the development of hurricanes. I didn't know anything about tropical waves before we went to the Caribbean. Tropical waves are not exactly a big issue in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

I also knew that the nightly rain in the Caribbean was an annoyance. The rain dropping through the hatch onto my face wakes me up, I close all the hatches, sometimes have to wait a minute or two and then open up all over again. Sometimes this happens three times in one night. Not exactly a solid night's sleep. This seemed odd. In Lawrenceville, our Summer rain always is in the afternoon. Want to know why this happens? Read Kotsch's (1983) Weather for the Mariner.

If you want to understand the weather and will be using that knowledge at sea, Kotsch's (1983) is a great book. This book provides explanations of why weather develops, why the trade winds blow the way that they do and what to look for in weather developments. I had read several other books on weather and had learned virtually nothing. This book, with its informative discussions and applications to developments at sea, explaine the weather clearly and carefully.

Kotsch's book is a Naval Institute Press textbook for the Naval Academy, so I didn't absorb it all right away. But the book repays rereading.

The publication date is over twenty years ago. Is the book out of date? You will notice the publication date when you read about satellite systems and hurricanes. We have more substantial satellite systems and know more about hurricanes. On the other hand, knowledge about low pressure systems hasn't changed that much. It is the best book around by a wide margin.

Houghton's (2006) Weather at Sea was really informative after reading Kotsch (1983). As a first book, Houghton covers the topics too fast for me to be able to get the significance of what's being said. This is a short book, only 80 pages long. After reading something else and having some understanding of overall weather patterns, the discussion and pictures of weather maps, clouds and hurricanes are unbeatable.

The link to the left is to the 2006 Fourth edition. I read the 1998 Third edition. Having read the third edition, I probably won't bother getting an updated edition. You might be just as well off if you buy a used copy of the earlier edition. I wouldn't get an edition more than ten years old, because there have been too many recent changes in weather technology such as satellite systems.

Chapman's Piloting (2006 and earlier years) and The Annapolis Book of Seamanship (1999) are classics of boating including sailing. They contain a great deal of useful information.

I use them the same way that I use dictionaries. I tried reading them, but that didn't seem very helpful. Both Chapman's Piloting (2006 and earlier years) and The Annapolis Book of Seamanship (1999) are useful for looking up things, such as the rules of the road and lights, not for reading about sailing or, more generally, boating.

It is too bad that Chapman's Piloting (2006 and earlier years) and The Annapolis Book of Seamanship (1999) are not available as CDs to load on your computer. That really would be worth having!