First Sailing / Sea Book You Ever Read ?

[Waterborn]

The Spirit of St. Louis

Ya Ya, I know. But it IS a book about crossing an ocean, and a great one at that.

[First Mate]

The first book on sailing I ever read was in 1982 - Royce's Book of Sailing.

I was alone with a girl friend on our 22' swing keel Catalina sailboat, attempting to anchor the boat, which I had never done before. I kept putting out the anchor line with a length = to the depth plus tidal change and kept floating into other boats.

The other boaters asked (strongly I might add) me to leave the anchorage. I motored for 45 minutes, pulled out Royce's Book of Sailing, and read the directions on how to anchor.

We successfully anchored out. When daylight came, we were wakened by flying aircraft. We were at the entry end of a private airport's runway. Our mast probably was a hazard to landing craft so we left before brewing coffee. We weren't welcome at that anchorage either.

Life goes on.

[Knowazark]

The Swallows and Amazons series of books were the first ones I can remember reading about sailing, but I also read most of the Hornblower series when I was younger and there were a bunch of books about WWII ships by an author whose name escapes me at the moment, that I read with great enthusiasm .... all sorts of stuff like the Murmansk run, minesweeping around the English Channel, E boats, U boats, MTBs, great stuff.

Mot of the accounts of circumnavigation I've read annoy the hell outa me because I sit there thinking that the author was a poorly prepared, overly optimistic and naive plonker and he (invariably its a he) was damned lucky not to get himself killed in the middle of the ocean or by blundering across the many hard bits at the edges of the ocean. Just goes to show that God looks after fools and children.

A great little book by Paul Elvstrom about racing - I was only a kid and it had little plastic models with it where you could actually re-enact racing stuff. Can't remember the name of it - I still have it somewhere - might dig it out!

I also remember Paul Elvstrom's little book on racing rules, etc with the plastic boats complete with mainsail/boom indicator to re-inact incidents. That was a great way to learn racing rules.

[Knowazark]

a bunch of books about WWII ships by an author whose name escapes me at the moment

Just recalled the author .... Douglas Reeman.

[svquest2]

The Mercer Boys in "the Cruise of the lassie". Circa 1943?

[anjou]

Desperate Voyage by John Caldwell when I was about 11, followed by Swallows and Amazons and a whole load of war time stories. Kon Tiki and Rah were also popular topics of the day

[JackHinks]

Alfred Lansing's Endurance (Shackleton's Expedition) which shows how skilled those guys were to sail an open boat hundreds of miles through Antartic seas to effect rescue of the entire party. Guess that is why I live in Florida...

[Hanna&Chris]

First you have to row a little boat. By Richard Bode.

Simply great.

Read a friend's copy..then went to go buy my own. Found it in the self help section and had a nice giggle about that.

[imagine2frolic]

I read Kon Tiki as a kid, but it never caught my attention. After I returned from Mexico, and my single-handed journey to Cabo from S.F. My wife gave me Webb Chile's book about his attempt to round the horn. For me it was a great read for adventure, and his style of writing......i2f

[TAREUA]

For me it was first the National Geographic's about Robin Lee Graham, and then later Dove. Chichester was an early on too. I became a teenage lake sailor hooked on sailing books. I ended up in some sailing book club, and I still have the books. The most influential addition might have been a TV movie back then called, I think, 'The Voyage of the Yes.' starring Desi Arnez, Jr. I don't know if anyone else saw it, and I've never seen it since, but it gave me a moving picture of what I was dreaming about that made everything seem more possible.

[imagine2frolic]

I never saw the program, but I like the fact he's sailing a Columbia........i2f

Amazon.com: The Voyage Of The Yes: Desi Arnaz Jr., Mike Evans, Beverly Garland, Skip Homeier: Video On Demand

[Solitude]

Dove!

[TAREUA]

i2f, that is extremely cool! I will watch that this weekend with the kids.

[flashmutt007]

I guess I'm a late bloomer in this sailing thing... 41 now and just getting started...

When the bug first hit me, I went to Google books and did searches on sailing & sailboats and found A LOT of stuff to read... most of it in the form of 'limited preview', but enough to get my interest going strong. I made a list of a few books that I thought I would like to continure reading and ordered them off Amazon...

I read them in the order they came in. First one that came in was The Voyager's handbook by Beth A. Leonard....

[S/V Willow]

Ray is sitting here in the cockpit at the moment reading "The boy who sailed around the world alone". Coincidence that this topic came up today as we were loaned the book by friends who have bought it for their grandson. Ray has often mentioned this book as being the inspiration to go sailing................and now he is.