For anyone considering setting sail, Eyewitness Companions offer an essential reference library, perfect for novices or anyone who just wants to know more about their favourite pastime.
- Heyday. This book is essential reading, whether you're dipping your toe in the water for the first time, or a seasoned sea-dog brushing up your skills. Find out how to get started: explore different boats, what to wear, & discover the correct kit to pack for rivers, lakes or the high seas. Learn the essential techniques, from rigging & launching your boat to advanced tacking, gibing & starting to race. Plus, get the low-down on navigating your vessel & handling emergencies. Take time to research before you go: explore the top sailing destinations of the world, whether you fancy cruising in the Mediterranean or drifting through the warm Caribbean. Make sure you dip into this before setting off.
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From luxury yachts to trim sailboats, sailing enthusiasts will delight in this tiny treasure trove of images of the world's ...

Joshua Slocum's epic solo voyage around the world in 1895 in the 37 foot sloop Spray stands as one of the greatest sea adventures of all time. It remains one of the major feats of singlehanded voyaging, & has since been the inspiration for the many who have gone to sea in small boats. Starting from Boston in 1895, by the time he dropped anchor in Newport, Rhode Island over three years after his journey began, he had cruised some 46, 000 miles entirely by sail & entirely alone. Slocum's account of his epic voyage is a classic of sailing literature, acclaimed as an unequalled masterpiece of vital yet disciplined prose. It will be welcomed by admirers of his legendary achievement. ' It is a timeless work that can be read again & again, & a story that totally absorbs the reader with it's enormity & honest endeavour' RNSA Journal ' Slocum's prose is a model of its kind: honest, vivid, salty, & at times, lyrical' Traditional Boats & Tall Ships ' One of the all-time classic sailing narratives' Classic Boat ...

When a ship under his command was wrecked on the coast of Brazil in 1887, it seemed that his maritime career had ended in disgrace. Not one for retiring to earthy pastures, Slocum rebuilt a hundred-year old sloop & set off from Boston in 1895 on the first single-handed circumnavigation of the globe. For more than three years Slocum battled stormy seas, attacks from raiders & pirates, & of course loneliness. He crossed the Atlantic no fewer than three times, spent weeks thrashing against the elements around Cape Horn, & found shelter in numerous exotic harbours. Sailing Alone around the World is the extraordinary story of one man's courage & resourcefulness, & has an enduring & universal appeal as a landmark of world adventure ABOUT STANFORDS TRAVEL CLASSICS Hailing from both sides of the Atlantic, the authors included are as diverse as Edith Wharton, Henry James, Ernest Shackleton & Alfred Russel Wallace. Every title has been reset in a contemporary typeface, & has been printed to a high-quality production

Specification, to create a series that every lover of fine travel literature will want to collect & keep

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” Sailing Alone around the World” is the extraordinary story of one man’s courage & resourcefulness, & has an enduring & universal appeal as a landmark of world adventure. Joshua Slocum spent a lifetime at sea. He ran away from his Nova Scotia home at the age of fourteen & for the next thirty-five years he sailed the world holding every shipboard rank. When a ship under his command was wrecked on the coast of Brazil in 1887, it seemed that his maritime career had ended in disgrace. Not one for retiring to earthy pastures, Slocum rebuilt a hundred-year old sloop & set off from Boston in 1895 on the first single-handed circumnavigation of the globe. For more than three years Slocum battled stormy seas, attacks from raiders & pirates, & of course loneliness. He crossed the Atlantic no fewer than three times, spent weeks thrashing against the elements around Cape Horn, & found shelter in numerous exotic harbours. This is a landmark, truly essential, piece of travel writing. About this series: The Stanfords Travel Classics series is a collection of the finest historical travel writing republished by the world`s leading map & travel bookseller. ...

A crippled boat & a lot of broken dreams. A broken marriage & a hunger to sail down into the Indian Ocean. This is both a love story about a boat, his beloved Tetranora & a story of a voyage out of love & into life. Along the way it explores ancient sailing routes from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. Just how did ancient trading vessels get around the Mediterranean & up & down the Red Sea & across & back from India & Southeast Asia? If boats of this era only had a squaresail, how on earth did they make to weather against the prevailingwinds that headed them? & just how did a navigator cross these foreign seas riddled with reefs & beset by tides & winds? In many ways the highs & lows of life on board an old 31 foot sailing boat mirror some of the experiences of the ancients. Sitting in the cockpit of a small sailing boat you are a lot closer to the same seas that the ancients sailed on & the same winds & storms that rattled their halyards than you are in a library. This book tells not only of life after love & of the love of an old wooden sailing boat, but of the adventure of the voyage & of ancient voyagers as well.‘ Rod interweaves his own story with pieces of philosophy & history related to the places he sailed through’. Sailing Today ...

Kim Sturgess was a weekend sailor: he enjoyed club racing & several brief sailing holidays, but had never attempted a substantial expedition. Reaching the age of fifty focused the mind & he decided to sail around Britain. While many cruising sailors would not contemplate a 1900 nautical mile voyage, he broke the voyage into a series of day sails, making it an achievable ambition for him, largely single-handed, & for many other weekend sailors who might dream of sailing around their home isl&. This book tells the quirky traveller`s narrative of the voyage & visits to forty-eight towns. Evoking the spirit of both Jerome K. Jerome with his Three Men in a Boat & Joshua Slocum`s Sailing Alone Around the World, Kim shares his thoughts & struggles, recounting how easy it is for anyone to become an adventurer here at home. But don`t expect to always agree with him
- he has been described as ”the Jeremy Clarkson of yachting”!
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This new book, based on a highly successful series of articles in Practical Boat Owner magazine, is a detailed practical guide to sailing around the UK
- all by means of day sails. Roger Oliver, a passionate sailor, explains his in-depth passage planning, boat preparations, weather checks & log-keeping, as well as his choice of routes, detailed navigation, sail trim tips & on-passage maintenance, all for the benefit of sailors who have a yen to follow in his footsteps. Packed with a wealth of practical tips on seamanship, anchoring in high winds, coping with big seas, problem-solving, harnessing the tide, sailing short-handed & living aboard for extended cruising, this book will be a godsend to the many thousands of sailors who enjoy coastal cruising & who will discover (as did Roger) that it is perfectly possible to cruise around the whole of the UK in a series of day sails. With this book to h&, & inspired by Roger's detailed route maps & spectacular photographs, anyone can experience the thrill & enjoyment of sailing around the beautiful & varied UK coast from any starting point.
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Capus takes us on an exploratory journey via the loss of a Spanish vessel laden with gold & jewels in the South Seas, the burial of treasure, an ancient map, & a long & dangerous voyage across the Pacific, to prove that Robert Louis Stevenson`s `treasure island` actually exists; & that it exists in a place quite different from where hordes of treasure-hunters have been seeking it for generations. In fact, he posits, it was for this reason alone that Stevenson spent the last five years of his life in Samoa. On a long trip round the Pacific islands with the idea of writing articles for American periodicals, Stevenson, travelling with his beloved wife, Fanny, & stepson Lloyd Osbourne, had no notion of stopping at Samoa when their ship made landfall in December 1889. Yet, only six weeks later, at the age of 39, he would invest all his available assets in a patch of impenetrable jungle & spend the rest of his life there. This book traces what led Stevenson to Samoa & the origins of his famous story. For facing him from this unlikely spot was another island
- a conical isle, Tafahi, where legends abound, & it was, Capus suggests, this isle that would cause him to change the course of his life.
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Alex Capus follows every step of Robert Louis Stevenson`s last years, studying every clue left behind by the Scottish writer & reaching his own conclusion about the most dramatic turn in Stevenson`s life: his decision to settle in Samoa, where the climate was poison for his already diseased lungs. When he arrived there in 1889, neither Stevenson nor his family particularly liked the Pacific island & wanted to stay for only a few days. Yet soon afterwards he changed his mind &, intriguingly, spent what little remained of his savings on a plot of land & began living there on a meagre income. Before long Stevenson set about building an opulent villa & lived out the rest of his days in splendour. What had happened? Capus asserts that Stevenson not only wrote the world-famous novel ” Treasure Island” here but searched for the treasure himself & furthermore found it towards the end of his life, on a little island he could see from the peak of the mountain in Samoa where he settled. ...