Your First Sailboat: How to Find and Sail the Right Boat for You

I love to sail but buying my first sailboat is quite the adventure. This book makes reading about all the details enjoyable and even humorous at times. I especially appreciate all the great illustrations to help understand the parts & various conditions of boats.

This book is what you need to get you from the livingroom to the water. Rev. Robert VanZandt

My husband and I have signed up for ASA Sailing classes, so we have been reading many "how-to" books on sailing. Lots of these books jump right into sailing lingo, and so the subject matter is very confusing for the novice sailor. We finally found Your First Sailboat when we looked for books on the subject of buying a sailboat. This is the book we should have read first!! Daniel Spurr writes humorously about the selection of boats, and along the way, we learn about sailing techniques as well. He approaches the sailing sport with clarity and common sense, and he writes in plain jargon, not the technical language that would overwhelm a beginner. We love this book!

As a newbie to sailing, I found this book a to be a wonderful overview of sailboats and sailing in general. The book is organized into short chapters covering just about everything I wanted to know before deciding to purchase a sailboat. The diagrams are just right- helping to illustrate key points quite handily. I would definitely recommend to others looking for an overview of sailboats.

I just got this book two days ago, and am so far very pleased with it. It organizes every single question I've ever had into concise, well-diagrammed, and sometimes humorous chapters. For example, the two-page chapter "What if the Boat Does Sink" certainly isn't an exhaustive study of the topic, but does give you extremely good pointers and common sense advice that will help you respond better to such a worst-case scenario. I think another good treatment of a subject is in the "What if the Boat Heels" chapter. It's a question that I imagine a lot of beginning sailors have, often accompanied by nervousness about how much heeling is normal and safe. The answer to this question has proved surprisingly elusive to me, so it was nice to see a little bit written on the topic, and to have my concerns addresses directly. What this all means is that this book does a phenomenal job of covering the bases. I would feel 100% more qualified to go buy and sail a boat after reading it. Of course, it's no substitute for comprehensive guides of special uses, such as offshore cruising, real foul-weather sailing, instrument navigation, etc., but it's a fantastic primer book for the price. Enjoy.