Tom Cunliffe - Complete Yachtmaster, The: Sailing, Seamanship and Navigation for the Modern Yacht Skipper 10th edition

Time to raise the colours, rouse out the crew, hoist the dinghy aboard and get under way.

The sailors market-place is well stocked with books on every topic to do with salt water. I ought to know, Ive written a number of them myself. There are two groups of specialist sailing texts. One deals with matters such as navigation, boat handling and meteorology, with which every skipper must have more than a nodding acquaintance. The other caters for the ever-enlarging number of subjects relating less directly to the essence of moving a yacht safely from one location to another. The volume you are about to read is designed specifically for skippers and potential skippers. Its purpose is to gather together all those vital areas of expertise to be found in the first group of books, place them in a systematic order between two covers, and discuss them in a practical way. The book should therefore not only prove useful as a companion to a sailing course, either hands-on or theoretical, but will also provide a long-term reference for the boats bookshelf.

I make no claim that The Complete Yachtmaster is the only work you will require in order to take charge of a yacht. Certain items, such as the use of radio communications, require a specialist volume in their own right, and it is not insignificant that teaching the VHF syllabus is a separate subject in most mainstream training systems.

Likewise, the wider aspects of boat maintenance and general husbandry are barely touched here. Peoples needs in such departments vary enormously, as do their talents for servicing them. If you own a classic wooden vessel you will have no desire to read about the application of epoxy coatings to a blistered GRP hull, but whatever type of craft you sail, you should know how to calculate the rise of tide at a given time and location. You may be such a congenital mechanical duffer that the finest manual on boat electrics will be no more than an incubus on your chart table, while the acquisition of the same work could change your neighbours life. Both of you, however, share an imperative demand for the skill to bring your vessels alongside crisply, cleanly and without fuss.

It is to such primary questions that this book is dedicated. In it, you will find the basic information that, when mastered and practised, will enable you to skipper a well-found yacht on coastal and offshore passages, taking due account of night and day, and whatever weather may betide.

In earlier editions this policy led to omitting comment on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (Colregs). The rules themselves are straightforward; they must be learned largely by rote, and reprinting them here would be a waste of paper. In the days before radar, AIS and other electronic aids became widely used, implementing them was plain sailing, so the subject was avoided. Today, interpreting the readouts from modern yacht electronics has rendered the subject of collision avoidance more complex, rather than less. Used to their full potential, these instruments can provide a remarkable degree of protection against collision. Abused or misunderstood, they are well documented as having led to increased rather than diminished danger, so a full chapter is now dedicated to dealing with these issues.

Throughout the English-speaking world, cruising training schemes have been set up by national and private authorities. The contents of all of these are more or less the same, forming the core of what all skippers should have at their fingertips. The British-based RYA Yachtmaster program is the oldest and among the best established. It has been used as a loose framework for this book, and I can give it no better recommendation than to cite the beginning of my own history as a certificated Yachtmaster.