Customer Reviews

High Performance Sailing

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is about high performance sailing, and how to go
as fast, under sail, as you possibly can. It doesn't
matter if you race keel boats, or sailboards, or dinghies
or multihulls; if you read, understand and practice what
is written in this book, you will be a faster sailor.

Frank and his family have include three Olympic competitors,
four World Championships, as well as several Grand Masters
(over age 60) World Championships by Frank himself. Frank
has been a coach on the Australian Olympic Team since 1972
and also pursued pastimes with model gliders (twice open
world endurance record holder) and full size sailplanes.
His latest accomplishment is that of codesigner (with his
son Julian)of the latest sailboat to be selected for the
2000 Sydney Olympic Games, the Bethwaite 49er.

The book itself is laid out into four distinct parts; wind,
water, the boat, and handling. Nothing is made in the book
of tactics or rules. Frank assumes that once you get out
in front, you stay out front.

In all, a deeply technical book on how to sail faster.
Highly recommended to serious sailors interested in
performance. A must for any technical sailors library.
Only once every 30 years or so does such a book come out,
the last being C. A. Marchaj's "The Aero-Hydrodynamics of
Sailing" from the 1960s. Don't miss it...

Frank Bethwaite and his son Julian are probably best known for their role in developing the Australian 18 skiffs and the 49er.

However, Mr. Bethwaite's background as a meteorologist, engineer, and pilot gives him a unique perspective in analysing the sailor's wind and how to maximize performance. His studies of hull drag, sail drag, and sail drive give the serious racing sailor valuable new information on how to maximize performance in a variety of conditions.

This book focuses on high-performance sailcraft, but the lessons are applicable to almost any racing boat.

Mr. Bethwaite provides many charts, graphs, and illustrations to support his observations on maximizing performance. Although this is a technical book, it is written for the layman.

This book significantly advances understanding of wind, sail trim, and boat handling. It is a must-read for anyone racing the new generation of planing sportboats like the Viper 640 or Melges 24, new high-performance racers like the Mumm 30 or One-Design 35, and the high-performance dinghies like the 29er, 49er, 505, Flying Dutchman, etc. But serious sailors of all sorts will benefit from the book, and the chapters on the development of the Australian 18 foot skiff are very interesting and not found in North American or European sailing texts.

I thought I knew about meteorology, waves, boatbuilding and sailing. I have a first class Cambridge degree in physics, have sailed and raced various boats (dinghies and sailboards) for 30 years and designed one fast dinghy. I thought I was one smart dude. Words begin to fail me. Wow! I wish I had known this lot 30 years ago. It turns out that I was pig ignorant. The book is the best I have ever seen on what the wind does. It's the best ever on how to handle it. It's extremely good on rigs and how to adjust them. It's not just the best ever, it's streets ahead. Don't expect to read it quickly. There is a vast amount to take in. If you really know your stuff you might get through it in a few weeks. Better to plan on a whole winter.

I was a hot shot dinghy sailor from the 1960's, read most of the books at the time. Reintroduced to this by my sons and the recent purchaser of a 29'er (Julian Bethwaite design) and as a somewhat hapless and occasional 50+ year old skipper of the same boat I decided to read up on the skills necessary for this skiff. Sometimes you are born too early. I could have used this information 30 years ago (but so could most of us if it had been known and available). Better late than never. The book covers slow (traditional keel, old style dinghys) boats, medium speed (high performance, laser 2's) boats and fast boats(skiffs). It is well written in a conversational tone. As in most scientific works you may need to reread some of the more analytical parts depending on your prior educational training. There are some interesting experiments that you can perform simply in your sink, bath tub, hot tub or pool to demonstrate the hydro/aero dynamic principles. I've got 30 or 40 sailing books in my library but this encompasses the most information on how to sail fast of the whole lot.

First off, due to a confusion at Amazon, the other reader reviews shown with earlier dates than this one are not for this book but for an earlier book by the same author with the similar name "High Performance Sailing". This book "HighER Performance Sailing" was published June 1 2009.

Frank Bethwaite refers to the older book as HPS-1 and this book as HPS-2. This book is not a revision of HPS-1 but really a completely new book that picks up from, and in many cases revises, the information set out in HPS-1. In certain places Bethwaite gives a brief recap of information from the earlier book and then refers the reader to it for more detail, but you can profitably read this book without ever having seen HPS-1.

HPS-1 was a brilliant book whose audience was reduced by a very eccentric organization and a very awkward writing style. Where a conventional book would try to lead you carefully from topic to topic while making sure that you haven't been left behind, HPS-1 doesn't. It reads more like the personal notebook of a mad scientist whose areas of study are the wind, the evolution of performance yacht design, and racing strategy. There was a huge amount of valuable, practical knowledge in this book that was new and hadn't been written before, but because of its very awkward exposition it was hard to extract. I had to read HPS-1 twice to get the benefit of it --- the first time to get an idea of what points he was trying to make, and a second time to decode the details. But it was well worth the effort. The discussions about how the wind works, in particular, are far more sophisticated and useful than anything else you'll find in the sailing or meteorological literature.

Where most of the information in HPS-1 was relevant to racing in any kind of boat. This new book is much more focused on the new and unique properties of modern skiffs and skiff-like boats that can sail faster than the wind. The writing style of this book seems to be better to me but perhaps only because I've become acclimated from the earlier one. The organization of this book is perhaps even more eccentric than the earlier book and jumps fairly randomly between various topics that the author finds interesting. There is also a huge amount of repetition. A good editor could have made this a much more appealing read.

But there are some gems of practical sailing knowledge in this book that I don't think you'll you won't find anywhere else. There is also a lot of historical information that won't help you sail faster but you will probably find surprising and interesting if you have an interest in the history of sailboat racing.

Just what is going on in a sailboat race (perhaps a regatta where everyone is sailing their 505 dinghies, and wearing t-shirts with comments on them such as the one in the title of my review)?

This book tells us plenty about what is going on.

The first part is about wind. And at once we're told about the various surface wind patterns, how they arise, and how often they repeat. The light air patterns are called "steady, unsteady, oscillating, and ribboning," while the breeze patterns are "steady, wandering, pulsing, convergent/divergent, channeling, and harsh." There's an enormous amount of specific advice about how to spot what is happening and how to react to each of these cases. We also see a discussion of the "stability index," which incorporates a number of factors that control predictability.

There's also some general race preparation advice. If your boat can match the speed of all the other boats in all conditions and you know what you are doing, that makes you the favorite, and you ought to sail conservatively. You pick three or four other boats that might win, ignore the others, and if those boats (roughly speaking) stay together, you stay in touch with them. "If you don't sail away from them, they cannot sail away from you." You beat them one by one by using the wind patterns, but only by enough to gain "the tactical advantage you need to be ahead of or inside of the selected boats at the next mark." Similarly, if you can't figure out a pattern, you can guess that a few others (perhaps with better "local knowledge") may know what they are doing better than you do. In that case, you should sail defensively, staying with the top boats. Those top boats will beat you, as will a few of the "gamblers," but you will beat most of the rest of the gamblers.

The second (and shortest) section is about water. That means a discussion of the types of waves, and the implications for proper boat handling, as well as currents and tidal streams, which affect navigation and tactics.

The third section deals with the specifics of the boat. Non-planing boats win according to wind speed in light and moderate winds, and according to wind direction in stronger winds. Boats which can plane, but not to windward, will win with wind direction upwind and with wind speed downwind. Boats that can plane to windward will win with wind speed, not wind direction.

This section comprehensively discusses sails, rigs, foils, and hulls.

The final section is on handling, to windward, crosswind, and downwind. That includes a discussion of downwind sailing in light airs, where it is of prime importance for the crew of the boat to stay as still as possible. That means moving as smoothly as possible to set up the jib on a whisker pole or set the spinnaker.

This section also includes a chapter on "kinetics," which is the co-ordinated movement of sails, steering, and body weight. When sailing to windward, the only useful variety of this is "surging," which means slowly and smoothly rolling to leeward a little bit to increase forward thrust. In other wind conditions, there are several other techniques, including impulses, energy-recovery, and pumping (overtrimming).

Sailors of all abilities can learn plenty from this book. I recommend it.

I love this book, it is incredibly deep and detailed with excellent illustrations. Teaching sailing is my job and I study this to improve my own racing performance and I will be passing the gems from this book to my more advanced students.

It is very technical, which I think is a good thing, in that it gives you an understanding of a lot of the detailed science inherent in wind, currents, tuning, handling etc. Mind you, there is a lot of information here... so expect to spend a season reading it and digesting it all. Some of it is so complex I still don't quite grasp it... but I will return to it and work through it when I get time.

If one could somehow 'brain dump' all the information in this book into a medium-level sailor's mind... he would be well on track for an olympic campaign.

I love this book and it will always be on my shelf as a guide, reference work and an interesting read in its own right. I give it the highest possible recommendation and I would love to have the depth of knowlege, penetrating insight and breadth of intelligence to have written this masterpiece.

It's a great book, although I don't think it's something for the average sailer. A vast knowledge of science will help you understanding this book much better. The book is devided into four parts, of which I especially found the first two parts, named wind and water, very usefull. Wind is not just the story about high and low pressures, it's also translated to the effects you see on the water and the action that needs to be taken for maximum benefit. The water part is a good explanation about wave paterns and how to sail it. Parts three and four, called The Boat and Handeling, I found less usefull. It's better to buy a book who's specific on your type of yacht than reading a general story about this.

I bought this book along with Rick White's Catamaran Racing for the 90's. Rick's book is easier to read, to-the-point, and full of pointers that can be applied on the water. The higher performance sailing however is like a textbook delving into theories of wind flows, hull design etc that will not add any value to how you should roll-tack, jibe, trim your sails, start racing, etc. I do not want to disregard the value of knowing the advanced topics in this book however for someone who races hobie fx1 on the weekends (for fun), this book literally contains too much information which also makes reading difficult.

This book has lots of really great information. Sketches and photos illustrate some of the main points, but it is definitely not a picture book for grownups. There is lots of text, lots of explanations, and is super practical. This book has plenty of hard-earned practical information with some theory where needed. This handbook of fast sailing covers wind, sails , hulls, trimming, the basics of what you'd need to sail a fast boat fast.