A mediocre performance
This isn't a Bad book; it's just that it's not a good one either. It's typical of the sort of thing that yachting journalists crank out to make money. The information in it probably won't get you killed, but some of the content is either wrong or contradictory. Vigor might be more convincing if he didn't confuse "soft tucks" (which used to be called garboards) with "soft bilges." He calls the former the latter. (Or is it really the deadrise angle he's talking about? Hard to tell.) It's the sort of mistake a beginner in yacht design might make because the area of the bilge in the interior of a boat might logically be thought to be called that on the exterior of a boat. But, in fact, the bilge curve (in contrast to "the bilge"), which may be descibed as soft or hard, is the area of a hull in cross section where the bottom curves or, in a chine-built boat, angles into the topsides. One might say of the error, "Hey, it's just a sematics problem," and be correct, except that it implies a lack of the expertise that Vigor claims at least tactitly through his authoritative prose. There are also other problems of "fact" in the book, e.g., his equating straight angled house fronts with seaworthiness or strength or something, when, in fact, such design elements require extra special strenghtening if they are to be strong.
Like so many, Vigor quotes Tony Marchaj as an authority on off shore yachts when, in fact, much of Marchaj's actual experience was in sailing dinghies at which he was an expert. L. Francis Herreshoff might have said of him (as he did of Manfred Curry in a similar context)that most of
his offshore sailing experience was in the realm of the imagination. But Vigor makes the mistake of taking all that theorizing for gospel. Again, it's a common mistake.
I could go on, but perhaps I've made my point.
People buy books like this as a substitute for their own experience. It's better when the writer knows more that this book exhibits.
On a positive note: what Vigor says about upgrading a Catalina 27 mostly makes good sense if, indeed, you want to go offshore in a Catalina 27.
A much better book on essentially the same subject by a genuine, but modest, expert, a man who admits when he's speaking from research rather than experience, is Hal Roth's, "How To Sail Aroung The World."
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Very helpful when shopping for a bluewater sailboat
With a bookshelf of excellent books on cruising, this became my primary source while shopping for a bluewater boat. (I had already digested his Twenty Small Boats . . . , even though I was looking for a larger boat.) Vigor's writing is clear and easy to understand. Plus he interjects just the right amount of humor. The books provides enough detail to truly educate me, without going into unnecessary detail.
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Buy This Book
Even if you do not plan to sail shorthanded thousands of miles offshore it's a very good idea to understand in detail what makes your boat seaworthy in difficult circumstances and to make it so.This book is a very thorough and very readable treatment of the subject of everything you need to know about a sailboat (except how to sail; that part is assumed). These sorts of things distinguish good sailors from the mass of recreational sailors and I, for one, have an ambition to become the former. If you do, too, then this is a great book to read several times. The Black Box theory of why some people are lucky and others aren't relates to preparedness and if only once in your life you need it, then it's worth it to you and your companions to have taken the trouble.
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