The Craft of Sail: A Primer of Sailing

This is a wonderful book for both children and adults who would like to learn the "nuts and bolts" of sailing. Adkins explains why sails work the way they do, with an understandable discussion of the Bernoulli effect, vectors, and the airfoil. He also explains various sailing techniques, such as docking, anchoring, tacking and gybing. Various knots are demonstrated as well. There are very attractive and useful illustrations throughout, which make the book very entertaining and accessable. My favorite part of the book is the 2 page spread showing various rigs. When I first started learning about boats, this helped me figure out the difference between a ketch and a yawl, and taught me the names for the various parts of a sail. This book contains lots of useful, digestible information at a reasonable price.

Thoughtful, thorough, and visually beautiful, especially if you like old boats. Those who believe thay must wear lycra suit rather than old t shirt and shorts to go, say, biking or to go sailing might not find it glitzy enough. I have bought four of them. One to replace our tattered copy at home, one for public library and two for favorite young relatives

Jan Adkin's book shows a gift for teaching as well as illustration, and his style is literate, rather pedagogical. Because I am new to sailing, I brougt home many books from the library that I hoped would be helpful. The Craft of Sail was better than any of the others.

Adkins begins where he ought to, with the underlying basic principles of how sails work. After that, details that might otherwise be confusing or a mere memorization chore fall into place and make sense. His small, heavily illustrated book is succinct, and each page, though clear, requires a lot of thought before turning. One other note: he addresses the principles that allow a boat to sail at a close angle to the wind much better than the other sailing authors I have read, who were generally off a bit in their understanding of the physics. (They typically confused the results of air collision with Bernoulli's principle.) It's a book for novices, but I think most sailors, even many experts, would benefit from the careful thought it exhibits and provokes. And it's cheap for what you get.

A very well done, simple to understand, text of the concepts and principles behind sailing. Any would-be-sailer in the entire family would enjoy this book.