Reviews From 2012

February 2012 Newsletter
April 2012 Newsletter

Gone To The Sea: Selected Stories, Voyages, And Profiles

by Herb McCormick (Paradise Cay Publications, 2011; 313 pages; $16.95)
Review By Dan Spurr
Bozeman, Montana

Herb McCormick and I wrote our first books together, after hours, banging away at IBM Selectric typewriters on the second floor of the old Cruising World offices in downtown Newport, Rhode Island. He and then-editor George Day were working on Out There, a fine narrative describing the first BOC Challenge singlehanded round-the-world race. Herb wasn’t too many years out of Williams College, where he starred as wide receiver on the school football team. He was not all that fast running in a straight line, but he was quick, and had great hands. Think Fred Biletnikoff from John Madden’s Oakland Raiders teams. If you’re not old enough to remember those great teams of the ’60s and ’70s, Wes Welker will do for now — short routes, quick moves, great hands.

As for most people, writing did not come easily to Herb, but he’s a quick study, and it wasn’t long before he figured out the secrets to the feature form: organize your material into a beginning, middle, and end. And if you’re clever, you’ll settle on an angle at the beginning that grabs the reader, then reprise it at the end.

Why this exposition on the craft of non-fiction writing? Because a good story is all in the telling. A talented writer can make any subject interesting. Take Herb’s account of meeting Catalina Yachts’ founder Frank Butler. “Traffic is moving briskly on California’s famed Ventura Highway, flowing due west from Los Angeles, and Frank Butler is moving right along with it . . . When he sees a quick opening, he goes for it, and the needle on the speedometer tilts accordingly . . . 65, 70, 75. There’s only one problem, really. About three cars back, leaning on the gas in a whining, woeful, compact rental, someone is desperately trying to maintain contact, visual and otherwise, with the blazing T-bird.

“That someone would be me.”

Turns out Butler wasn’t leading Herb to the sailboat plant, but to the warehouse full of old cars he collects — a 1920 Dodge Phaeton, a 1940 ragtop Lincoln Continental, and lots of Thunderbirds.

Fast forward to the story’s end, where Butler bids Herb adieu. Speaking of his life, Frank says, “I do know one thing. It went very fast. When you enjoy things, they go fast. Real fast.”

To which Herb extends the automotive metaphor: “Well, yes. Fast. That’s the speed when you never take your foot off the pedal.”

The 28 stories in this engaging anthology are as varied as Herb’s travels around the globe. Meet “The (Not Quite) Mellow Dude,” Dennis Conner, who, on first meeting Herb, sees alarming parallels with TV mobster Tony Soprano; singlehander Mike Plant before his last voyage; Don Street; Ted Kennedy, and a crazy collection of other blokes. Herb knows that while we’re all in this game for the love of boats, it’s people who make the stories.

I tell you this in the hopes you’ll plunk down your hard-earned cash to buy this book. You’ll get change for your twenty. And I promise you short routes, quick moves, and great hands.

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Cruising Conversations With A Daring Duo

by Charles and Corinne Kanter (Sailco Press, 2011; 364 pages; $19.95)
Review by Chas. Hague
Des Plaines, Illinois

This book by Charles and Corinne Kanter, the daring duo of the title, is the ninth they have written about their lives (married 54 years!) spent mostly sailing in mostly catamarans, along the East Coast and the Bahamas. The book is a somewhat randomly thrown together collection of anecdotes, responses to questions asked at boat shows, sea stories, advice pieces, and other goodies.

The Kanters have survived hurricanes (four of them), overcome bureaucracies, made numerous boat-delivery trips, and traveled in the Caribbean islands—including Cuba. The longest vignette, “The 13th Trip,” is a yarn about taking their 32-foot catamaran, La Forza, up the Intracoastal Waterway with a gremlin named Murphy as stowaway.

They’ve met people such as the couple in Charleston, North Carolina, who, seeing them standing in the rain wearing foul-weather gear, casually invited them for coffee. On a different stay in the same gracious city, a smack upside the head by a jibing boom ends up at a shore-side BBQ. Then there are the three Bobs, and Tristan Jones . . .

Included with the yarns is a lot of practical advice, such as how to finance a liveaboard lifestyle (don’t sell the house, rent it out), how to anchor (“Where did all the other boats go?”), how to steer a course (“But it sails much better if we go this way!”), and how to get an engine fixed (“All the good mechanics are working for the smugglers”). The Kanters learned a lot in their 100,000 miles of sailing, and the lessons are given clearly and with humor. Several of the pieces are illustrated with cute cartoons by Joe O’Brien.

Reading this book is like sitting in the cockpit with two experienced sailors, listening to their adventures and learning about how to avoid their mistakes— a good, light, informative read.

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Here We Are: The History, Meaning And Magic Of GPS

by Jim Carrier (New Word City, Inc., 2011; 29 pages–eBook; $2.99)
Review by James Williams
St. Petersburg, Florida

In his electronic book, Here We Are, Jim Carrier, author of several books including the well-received The Ship and the Storm about the 1998 loss of Windjammer Cruises’ 282-foot schooner Fantome to Hurricane Mitch, briefly recounts the history of the Navstar Global Positioning System, simply known today as GPS.

Appropriate to the electronic technology he describes, Carrier’s work is available only as an eBook and makes use of numerous links to online information. His links act in some ways as valuable footnotes, which should be the point of links in eBooks and online essays; however, I found that links to commonplace names such as “Columbus,” “sextant,” “Cold War,” and “Soviet Union” distracted my reading.

The Soviet launching of Sputnik in 1957 marked the beginning of GPS technology and a worldwide revolution in navigation. Scientists at Johns Hopkins University employed the Doppler effect to track Sputnik and then reversed the concept and used known satellite orbits to locate their position. The Navy quickly saw the value of this for its nuclear submarine fleet and contracted with Johns Hopkins to build Doppler-tone satellites. In 1959, the Transit system, precursor to today’s GPS, was launched, and within a few years the military developed atomic-clock-based satellite navigation systems. “By 1972,” writes Carrier, “there were, by one estimate, 47 different U.S. military navigation satellites in orbit or on the drawing boards.”

Inter-service bickering threatened to kill space-based navigation development, but during a short tenure as Deputy Secretary of Defense (1969-1971), David Packard, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, created a joint program office in the Department of Defense to end the inter-service dissension. In 1973, Air Force Colonel Bradford Parkinson was appointed to head the office, and he is credited with saving space-based navigation and choosing the best technology from the top three contenders. It was named Navstar and, in 1978, the first satellite of the new system was launched.

GPS backers struggled to compete with military brass wanting funding for weapons during the Carter years, but eventually the Air Force adopted and funded GPS because of its efficacy in putting bombs on target. In 1983, the downing of Korean Air Line flight 007 by Soviet war planes prompted President Reagan to offer GPS to the world’s airlines and the launching of additional satellites began in earnest in 1989, just in time for the first Gulf War to prove beyond doubt GPS’s military value.

Meanwhile, entrepreneurs tapped into GPS. Charlie Trimble founded Trimble, Inc., in 1978, which became the leader in developing products harnessing GPS to commercial and consumer uses as well as to military use. In 1989, Garmin opened its first offices in Lenexa, Kansas, and a year later introduced the first marine GPS, a panel-mounted unit priced at $2,500 that generated 5,000 orders at that year’s International Marine Technology Exposition in Chicago.

In 1994, the U.S. government officially declared that the GPS system was fully operational. Already, GPS receiver prices were falling, and its use was becoming commonplace. Carrier concludes his brief history with a look at the current operation of GPS and an array of examples of how GPS has impacted society.

While sailors may wish that Here We Are devoted more space to GPS in the maritime world, Carrier makes clear that GPS revolutionized marine navigation. I am sure he would agree with Tim Bartlett of Sail Magazine that, with GPS, “for the first time in history, ordinary sailors could quickly, easily, reliably, and affordably fix their position at the push of a button, no matter what the conditions.” And, perhaps the history of GPS in sailing is for another book to explore.

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The Sailor's Book Of Small Cruising Sailboats:
Reviews And Comparisons Of 360 Boats Under 26 Feet

by Steve Henkel (International Marine/McGraw Hill, 2010; 412 Pages; $29.95)
Review By Paul Maravelas
Mayer, Minnesota

Steve Henkel collected information for decades before compiling this fascinating compendium on fiberglass cruising sailboats sold in the U.S. Nearly all of the boats get a full page, with roughly half of each page devoted to plans. The 8½ x-11 inch format is large enough to make the plans accessible, and Henkel shows us a sail plan, a full hull profile from abeam, and an interior plan for each boat. Each review includes Henkel’s own opinion of the boat’s best and worst features, and data for several comparable boats. The book is organized in six sections, according to boat length, so comparison is easy. Henkel uses length on deck to categorize the boats.

An unusual amount of data is included. In addition to the typical data, Henkel gives the boat’s designer, the most prominent manufacturer, years of production, sail area, tank capacities, bridge clearance, PHRF rating, hull speed, and headroom. He developed a “space index” that estimates the total cabin space, and gives ratings for motion underway based on Ted Brewer’s comfort ratio. In some cases, Henkel has measured from the manufacturer’s drawings to supply or correct information. An introductory chapter does a fine job of discussing the measurements and their meaning.

Henkel, one of the founders of the short-lived Sailor magazine, has been writing about sailing since 1971 and has owned 23 different boats. In this book he includes lists of boats that he thinks are particularly well suited for various kinds of sailing. There is an informative chapter discussing boat character and the pros and cons of various features (tiller vs. wheel, outboard vs. inboard, full keel vs. fin, etc.). Oddly, this information follows the reviews, though it seems better suited for a place at the beginning.

This book would be improved if Henkel’s generalizations were pulled from individual reviews and blended into the chapter on boat character. The 76 photos at the back of the book seem to be an afterthought, with no indication in the corresponding boat reviews that a photo is included. Regrettably, some of the drawings, apparently taken from the marketing materials of the manufacturers, are not clear enough so that all of the notes can be read or the details discerned. In a perfect world, the drawings would have been redone and sometimes simplified for clarity.

In general, however, the book is a rich addition to the literature. It’s absorbing simply to read the reviews and contemplate the unfolding design trends in cruising boats. Only sixty years have elapsed since fiberglass boats were introduced, but the evolution of hull design — including changes in keel and rudder shapes — has been significant. Sail plans, to a lesser extent, have also changed. Henkel’s work shows that, despite trends, a few makers have continued to sell slower but more sea-kindly hull designs, as well as interesting alternatives to sloop and cutter rigs. The design of the Cape Cod Marlin, for example, a 23-foot full-keeled sloop, reaches back to Nathanael Herreshoff, who died in 1938. The boat’s lines and sail plan were revised by Herreshoff’s son, Sidney, and when introduced in 1957, the Marlin was one of the first fiberglass boats to appear on the market. Interestingly, it is still being made by Cape Cod Shipbuilding.

Henkel has completed another volume, covering cruising boats 26- to 31-feet in length, which International Marine hopes to publish in the future.

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Lesson Plans Ahoy! Hands-on Learning for Sailing Children
and Home Schooling Sailors

by Nadine Slavinski (Slavinski-Schweitzer Press, 2nd Edition, 2011; $26.95; 267 pages)
Review by Carolyn Corbett
Lake Shore, Minnesota

Lesson Plans Ahoy! is an excellent educational guide for cruising families. Author Nadine Slavinski is a teacher, a parent, and a sailor, and has capitalized on her knowledge in each of those roles in this fine book. She has a master’s degree in education, has taught in international schools for 15 years, and took a year-long sailing sabbatical with her husband and 4-year-old son.

The book opens with “How To’s of Home Schooling on a Boat,” which encompasses information on choosing an approach — a balanced look at the pros and cons of both packaged home-schooling programs and self-designed home schooling. Slavinski’s book is an effective component for either end of the spectrum. She goes on to offer general strategies for home schooling aboard a boat and structuring the curriculum, from creating an overall educational plan for the cruise all the way down to daily lesson plans.

Units include:

  1. Earth & Space Science
  2. Biology: Fish Dissection
  3. Chemistry
  4. Mathematics: Data Management
  5. Mathematics: Measurement  
  6. Writing
  7. History: The Voyages of Christopher Columbus
  8. History: The Voyages of Captain Cook
  9. Navigation with Map & Compass
  10. Physical Education: Heart Rate & Exercise

Each of these 10 units of study is directly related to life aboard a cruising boat and all are accompanied by suggestions for enrichment activities, cross-curricular links to other subject areas, and resources, including books and educational web sites. Each unit can be condensed to be covered in just a few lessons or expanded for in-depth study. “The idea is not to strictly follow the text,” the author says, “but rather to use it as a guide for student-driven inquiry.”
Slavinski has provided directions for differentiating the lessons that allow parents to modify the material for the individual child, as well as to easily adapt the lessons to children ranging in age from 4 to 12 years old. It’s amazing!

It is difficult to convey in a short review how applicable the lessons are to life aboard a boat. For example, the section dryly labeled “Mathematics: Data Collection” is actually about graphing water consumption on board, though it can be modified to cover fuel consumption, the nationalities of boats in the anchorage, or most anything on which the family chooses to practice simple to complex graphing. “Earth & Space Science” covers the lunar cycles, eclipses, time zones and the moon and tides. The history units on Captain Cook and Christopher Columbus are divided into subsections that cover a variety of curricular areas taking a sailor’s point of view and emphasizing that history can be seen through different perspectives. Navigation covers map reading, topography, taking fixes, compass exercises, and dead reckoning. Yup, all of this adaptable even for 4- and 5-year-olds.

Appendix A demonstrates how the units can be divided into manageable daily lessons of 45 to 60 minutes each. In order to help parents identify how each of the 10 units related to schoolwork back ashore, Appendix C offers a comprehensive cross-reference for science, math, and writing units with the national or state curricula from four different countries. This covers the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom for grade levels from early childhood through grade seven and helps families to recognize expectations in their land-bound schools.

There’s a whole lot more packed in this 267-page book, and I strongly recommend all “boat schooling” families check out this valuable resource!

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Outfitting the Offshore Cruising Sailboat:
Refitting Used Sailboats for Blue-Water Voyaging

by Peter I. Berman (Paradise Cay Publications, 2012; $19.95; 256 pages)
Review by Karen Larson
Minneapolis, Minnesota

The subtitle, Refitting Used Sailboats for Blue-Water Voyaging, of Peter Berman’s new book, Outfitting the Offshore Cruising Sailboat, tells why it’s an important new reference for good old boaters. Peter’s basic premise is that new offshore cruising sailboats are prohibitively expensive and somewhat uncommon, while the market in used cruising sailboats is rich and vast and flourishing. There’s something there for everyone.

His 45-year experience as a cruiser in nearly a dozen different designs (CCA through modern racing designs) is enlightening. While Peter has formed strong opinions about many features, he does not recommend one design type over another. He knows, perhaps better than most, that every sailboat is a compromise and that priorities and budgets will vary from sailor to sailor.

What he offers is a series of observations and a logical review of onboard systems that will help any prospective offshore cruiser consider the pros and cons of each system, feature, and sailboat type. In the end, the reader of Outfitting the Offshore Cruising Sailboat will be able to determine which features are personally important and which have a lower priority.

I chuckled occasionally at Peter’s dry wit but found that I didn’t agree with every word of his sage advice. I’m just one sailor, after all, with one set of values and preferences, but I was surprised, for example, to note that Peter overlooked the value of freshwater sailboats, as they apparently do not figure in the experience of this East Coast (and beyond) sailor.

Peter starts his discussion of good used boats by ranking the most expensive systems: the rig, the engine, and the ground tackle. As these are the most expensive items to replace, he gives each system a thorough and thoughtful critique based on his experiences as a cruiser. There are many nuggets here for every would-be cruiser. In particular, he includes good tips about good and bad construction features in the rig, bearing in mind intended use for coastal vs. offshore work. This section clearly spells out features to look for if you will be cruising offshore.

Over all, Peter offers great advice about buying a good old cruising sailboat and how to refit it for several more decades of offshore cruising adventures. Like the rest of us, Peter has conflicts about the best possible cruising sailboat. After saying that larger is always better, that system redundancy is critically important, and that you should replace practically everything before going offshore, Peter admits that his first cruiser was probably his favorite. A primitively equipped wooden Dickerson, this boat cost only $16,000, had fewer systems to maintain, and was his most affordable cruiser. After telling readers they should probably invest the purchase price of the boat in the refit, and to replace all the important and expensive systems, he reminds us that the first priority is to “just go.” Time is the enemy, he says, so don’t spend your life in “endless outfitting.”

In the end, as in all things, it’s up to the reader to make his own choices based on his own list of priorities. But Peter offers great advice that may help each reader rank his own list of priorities and consider some systems and construction methods that he may not have thought about.

If you’re still searching for your offshore sailboat and juggling the hundreds of variables, Peter Berman — a guy who’s been there and done that — has some very useful advice for you.

Read this book. Then go get the boat, get to work on the refit, and get going . . . now —while you can.

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Reeds Knot Handbook: a Pocket Guide to Knots, Hitches and Bends

by Jim Whippy (Paradise Cay Publications, 2011; $9.95; 128 pages)
Review by Wayne Gagnon
Antigo, Wisconsin

As a kid I was kind of a klutz. In fact, I can still hear my buddy Chuck calling out to me from second after yet another strikeout, “Wayne, I’ve never seen anyone as uncoordinated as you!” Almost 50 years later, I still have to laugh at Chuck’s honesty. When I was a Boy Scout we had to learn some basic knots, and that same lack of hand-eye coordination haunted me there too. I managed to learn a few and I was amazed to find that, after many years, I could still tie a bowline and whip the end of a rope. So when I was asked to review Reeds Knot Handbook I thought it was nothing less than karma.

Reeds Knot Handbook is a pocket-size, easy-to-use, color-coded guide to tying almost 60 different knots. There’s a two-page introduction to the terminology of knot tying that explains the difference between the working end, the bight, the standing part, and the end of a rope, and a very brief explanation of the different materials used in various types of ropes. The book is divided into six categories of knots: overhand knots and hitches, figure-of-eight knots, bowlines and bends, crossing knots, wrap-and-tuck knots, and “Other Useful Knots.” There’s a brief description of the application of each knot, a color illustration of each step in the tying process, and a color picture of the finished product. If more than one rope is involved, each one is a different color to help the reader keep them separate.

Having a resource liked Reeds Knot Handbook is certainly handy, but the only way to learn a new skill is to simply do it. With that in mind, I grabbed an old length of clothesline, opened the book to page 50, and attempted a bowline on a bight. The next thing I knew it was abracadabra, zippity-do-dah, yadda-yadda-yadda, and I had done it. Well, not the first time, but with my lack of hand-eye coordination I was pleased with the results and, with practice, I’m sure it will get easier. If you’re looking for an easy-to-use guide to knots that are useful and, in some cases, just plain cool, Reeds Knot Handbook will work quite nicely for you, and it won’t take up a lot of space on a bookshelf or on a boat.

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The Limbus of the Moon

by Bill Mego (<www.billmego.com>, 2011; $24.95; 360 pages)
Review by Chas. Hague
Des Plaines, Ilinois

The Limbus of the Moon is a novel in the mold of a Dan Brown thriller, or at least it tries to be. Viator venenatus is a sea urchin, very rare, incredibly valuable, and possibly the source of life-saving drugs. A mysterious eccentric thinks he can breed them in captivity. He’s persuaded a rich Chinese shipping magnate with ties to Asian criminal organizations to fund an expedition to locate this possibly extinct animal.

Recruited into this expedition are Robert McLaren, researcher, teacher, mentor, and man of action: seeing an airplane a half mile out on final approach, he immediately starts running to the spot on the runway where the wreckage eventually comes to rest.* On that airplane is Jessica Meyer, a State Department facilitator who is supposed to help this project run smoothly. Other characters involved are Gus Kolar, reef expert and captain of the Hina Ko’a, and his assistant Andreas Hook. There are also glamorous island residents, pirates, and operatives for different organizations who may or may not be on the same side as the explorers. Nobody is quite who they first appear to be.

The story runs to several exotic locales, such as mysterious islands and the reefs of the East coast of the Caribbean. Even so, it’s about as exciting as a business trip to Vancouver, with occasional instances of violence thrown in. The sailing doesn’t begin until 200 pages into the book, and then it’s on a big catamaran with every luxury, including solar-electric motors and an Artificial Intelligence computer. There is a climactic pursuit that ends at a well-known nautical landmark, followed by a series of coincidences as the author wraps up all the plotlines.

The book needs better descriptions of the people and locations, and more excitement in the plotting. There is one great laugh-out-loud scene based on a foreign intelligence chief’s idea of how to not be noticed in Chicago. Mego has a wonderful ear for dialogue, but the book is like sailing a big catamaran on calm seas — pleasant enough, but not as exciting as tearing along on your beam ends.

*This reviewer is grateful to the author for reinstating Meigs Field, which is more than the current mayor of Chicago has done.

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