Traditional sailing and adventure

Topsail and Battleaxe

A rollicking read that traces a voyage made to Newfoundland in my 1911 pilot cutter, Hirta, via Norway, Iceland and the Greenland Sea. My crew are a vivid reflection of the Viking pirates and colonists who made the same voyage a thousand years previously. They include such reprobates as Chris Stewart, author of best-selling lifestyle book,  'Driving over Lemons'.  The story follows the Norsemen and women with their trials and tribulations as closely as it does our own. Thus, you get two tales for the price of one. The reader joins my own group of 'chancers' hacking westwards into the teeth of some awesome weather in a very old boat indeed, while enjoying a full-blooded account of the activities of the  'rape and pillage' boys based on the Icelandic Sagas.    

Published in paperback by Seafarer Books at £10.95. The first edition (David and Charles) is out of print, but it is a lovely, fully illustrated hardback if you can find one. If you can't - and they are very scarce - click this link to buy the paperback from me instead!

The photo below is of me and Chris Stewart reminiscing in a Spansh bar 25 years after the events in the book.

Hand, Reef and Steer

A beautifully illustrated text book on sailing gaff-rigged craft, published in a new edition by Adlard Coles. Even if gaffers aren't your 'bag', any sailor must surely be fascinated by the traditional boats we see more and more. Numerous fine replicas are now swelling the fleet of originals, and the number of owners building new cruising yachts with the old rig is quietly increasing.

For most of my life, I've had connections with gaffers. I've crossed oceans in them, raced them, loved them ,cursed them, then gone out and bought bigger ones. They can be absolute bears to sail, or they can be surprisingly easy. Much depends on you, but in either case the emotional rewards of getting it right are enormous. Hand Reef and Steer is not a dry statement of every kind of gaffer, it is a hands-on manual of how to survive gaff rig and to glory in getting it right. It can help you make a cutter point higher, or a schooner reach faster, and even if you never intend to sail either, it will certainly enrich your understanding. 

By the way, the title is a quote from an long-forgotten definition of a proper seaman - 'handing a sail' is taking it in, and a sailor of calibre was said to be able to 'hand, reef and steer'. 

Published Thomas Reed at Adlard Coles Nautical  £17.95

buy from www.bookharbour.com