Product Description

Answering all of the important questions, this book attempts to allay any novice's fears - not just about how to sail an ocean for the first time - but also how to enjoy it. Here are insights into the social as well as nautical reality of fitting out, the comfort of having highly detailed plans, the norm of impulsive decisions, the inside story of life with a crew, coping with unexpected gales and calms, the live-or-die decision to keep watches or not and the ports of call from Spain to Tobago via the Atlantic islands and West Africa. Your First Atlantic Crossing combines practicalities with experience, and is now established as an essential read for ocean novices and dreamers. In colour for the first time, it is the book Les Weatheritt wishes he could have read before his own Atlantic crossing. 'I shall enjoy dipping into this dream maker, time and again...an excellent guide to the planning of your Atlantic crossing. Read all the other books but keep this one beside you' Cruising Association 'Offers down to earth advice based on hard-won experience' Yachting Monthly 'Covers everything the novice sailor needs to know for a voyage across the Atlantic' Practical Boat Owner

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #89998 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Review
"The wide range of topics covered her serve more to direct the yachtsman reader's attention to what matters most, rather than to instruct in detail." Nautical Magazine (June 2008)

About the Author
Les Weatheritt has been trying to get back to the Caribbean since he was a deck-hand on a schooner there at the age of 21. In 1994, he sailed the Atlantic on Petronella - she is still in the Caribbean and he is in no hurry to sail her back.

Customer Reviews

Practical and informative and just fun to read
Got this book from a friend who came out to Oz to sail the Tasman with me and she thought I needed to be up to speed on crew handling and night watches and heavy weather but not so that my conversation suffered, hence her choice of this little book. I read it at one sitting and so did my dad.
This book is about sailing any ocean and not just for first timers. I've done a lot of crossings between Oz and NZ and read a lot of the main authors but this little book is the one I'd read over because it just made me want to get right back on the boat and go. I can think of plenty of experienced sailors who should read this before they ship a crew again.
The practical stuff is spot on, as you'd expected from someone who sailed the atlantic, but so too is the thought he's given to what was good and bad with his passage making. We can all learn from this but it's good to leaarn from such a witty writer.

Inspiring and practical. Great for do-ers and dreamers
I agree with the review I read in the Cruising Association magazine - read lots but keep this book on the top of your pile to inspire and focus you. The comments on routes, equipment and so on are very practical. I really enjoyed reading about what the sea and weather were like - a glipmse of reality. The advice on living with crew are the most thoughtful and thought-provoking I have read anywhere. Wow! A bad crew is hell, a good crew is heaven, but whichever you get depends on the skipper. I hope to be like the author and get to the other side still on speaking and partying terms with mine. I had planned to cross from the Canaries till I read the author's comments on Africa. Like him, I plan to make this trip a complete adventure. Best of all in this book is the re-assurance and comfort that I don't need to be one of sailing's heros to sail the Atlantic.

Read it, give it to your friends to help them understand you and your dream, and to your crew as part of THE PLAN!! I didn't know I needed THE PLAN till I read this book. And the illustrations are inspired - my congrats to the illustrator especially for the one "sailing in moonlight bright as the day".

Now excuse me, I really must go sailing.

I wish I'd read it before my own first crossing
I think this is a great little book. Its a bit like a novel - strong story line, packs a punch, some very funny moments as well as some hair raisers. It also echoed with a lot of what I discovered about the ocean and myself when I sailed from Europe to Antigua. The crew section is great - wish I'd had it while we were sailing!! The advice about watch keeping is exactly right. I felt for them all at the near miss with the monstrous Cape Verde fishing boat.

I gave the book to my father in law - a non-sailor - and he couldnt put it down, so I guess it has very wide appeal.

The author is right to say you must read lots of books, not just his. I read plenty 'cos that's an essential part of the preparation, and I read some of the same ones he mentions. Read them all, but especially read his cos it captures the experience for "an ordinary Joe".