Sailing – Public Intelligence Blog

2020/12/232020/12/23

Review: Farwell’s Rules of the Nautical Road Ninth Edition by Craig H. Allen Sr. & Craig H. Allen Jr.

5 Star Top Professional Book on the Subject

This is a most extraordinary book intended for professional officers and petty officers, not your average day sailor. Until I was offered this book as a gift, my personal D Skipper collection consisted of three items:

Captain's Quick Guides Rules of the Road and Running Light Patterns by Charlie Wing
United States Coast Guard Navigation Rules and Regulations Handbook
US Chart No. 1: Symbols, Abbreviations and terms used on Paper and Electronic Navigational Charts

This book at 542 pages is vastly more detailed, nuanced, complex, and rewarding than my three “cruising skipper” guides as it is intended for professional officers and petty officers with a particular respect for those manning warships and confronting warships in both international waters and inland waterways. It is part of the US Naval Institute Blue & Gold Professional Library that includes such standards as Command at Sea and Fleet Tactics and Naval Operations.

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2019/08/302019/09/01

Review: Catamarans – The Complete Guide for Cruising Sailors

5 Star, Sailing

SUMMARY REVIEW

5 Star – Truly Superb Structured Overview, Most Ably Illustrated with Photos and Charts, Essential Pre-Reading Before Renting or Buying

Review by Robert David Steele

I have read this book twice and made note of a number of critical considerations to keep firmly in mind if chartering or buying.

This is a large size book (11″ x 9″) and superbly laid out. The paper while glossy lends itself to pen annotation and I have the book heavily annotated.

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2015/03/292015/03/30

Review: The Onboard Medical Guide – First Aid and Emergency Medicine Afloat

4 Star, Sailing

Paul G. Gill

The Best in Its Time, Superceded by Marine Medicine, March 29, 2015

Dated but exceptional.

I have been so unhappy with the “standard” references such as Advanced First Aid Afloat that that I created my own informal study guide for offshore use, one page per item, description/diagnostics, treatment, and photo.

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2015/03/292015/04/01

Review: Marine Medicine

5 Star, Sailing

Eric Weiss and Michale Jacobs

5.0 out of 5 stars BEYOND First Aid, Comprehensive It Is March 29, 2015

I've been an offshore sailor since 1988, off and on, and in all that time I have been very frustrated by a wide range of largely mediocre medical references, to the point that I created my own First Aid Afloat reference (one page per issue, description/diagnosis, treatment, photo).

Prior to this book (WARNING NOTICE: this is a small book with SMALL print), my preference has been for The Onboard Medical Guide: First Aid and Emergency Medicine Afloat, in part because it comes with large pages, large print, and lots of white space. While this is the first NEW maritime medicine reference that meets my standards, I would have preferred a larger layout with larger print. This is a cargo pocket book.

Thank having been said, yesterday I had the pleasure of listening to Dr. Jacobs lecture the US Safety at Sea Seminar in Annapolis — this is the premier US Sailing event of the year — and today I had the further pleasure of an interactive session with the good doctor. I found him to not only be a superb professional, but the perfect gentleman whom I would recommend as a lecturer, mentor, and hands-on trainer.

Use Amazon's “Look Inside the Book” to review the extraordinary table of contents. Books such as Advanced First Aid Afloat, do not satisfy m; while I like the Red Cross online PDF including the color photographs, that could still do with some improvement. What wins me over completely, the small size and print aside, is the very long list of specifics (including multiple pages on fractures and multiple pages on internal injuries) along with the concluding appendices on drugs and assistance sources.

Review: Teaching Fundamentals for Sailing Instruction

5 Star, Sailing

US Sailing

Perhaps the best teaching/coaching “best practices” overview I have ever read

This volume complements – with some overlap but certainly worth reading on its own merits – the US Naval Offshore Sail Training Squadron Experiential Leadership Guide, which cites this books as recommended additional reading.

Worthy of immediate and continuous note is the opening emphasis on the legal responsibility of a sailing instructor – a duty of care with attendant legal obligations and a vulnerability to being sued if all four of the following can be proven:

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2015/01/17

Review: Total Loss – A Collection of First-Hand Accounts of Yacht Losses at Sea

5 Star, Sailing

Jack Coote Revised by Paul Gelder

Wake Up Call for Anyone Responsible for a Small Vessel and Its Souls

This is a hugely important book that should be in any personal or organizational (e.g. sail training program) library. It is organized into the following parts: weather (and waves), faulty navigation (poor thinking), failure of gear or rigging, failure of ground tackle or mooring lines, collision (think submerged free floating shipping container), fire or explosion, and towing mishaps.

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2010/02/162010/02/16

Review: Yachtsman in Red China

5 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Sailing

Real Life From Building the Boat to Being Captured by the Chinese

February 16, 2010

David J. Steele

I watched my father build the Piver Tri-Maran in his garage and front yard of our home in Saigon, South Viet-Nam (at the time). This book is a still exciting story of an oil engineer and manager (at the time in charge of all Esso supply for all of Viet-Nam) who built a boat from scratch and sailed it from Saigon toward Hong Kong.

20 miles off the coast of Hainan (by his calculations) he was rammed by militia-pirates and the boat sunk, leaving him in the water. He was taken prisoner and vanished from the public eye. Months later he was released into Hong Kong with some photos of pieces of his boat washed up on shore, and his sextant.

The best part of the book for me has always been his account of being treated as a guest rather than a prisoner in China, and when asked what Americans drank with their meals, his response “a big bottle of beer.” That's what he got, and he claims that is why he only lost 40 pounds or whatever it was.

I still have the “little red book” he was given to read while a prisoner. My positive opinion of the Chinese has been shaped in part by their very dignified treatment of my father as a quasi-prisoner, combined with my finishing high school in Singapore at a time when Minister-Mentor Lee Kuan Yew was just hitting his statesmanlike-stride.