Customer Reviews

Sailing Fundamentals

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I had been sailing for only three years when I got this book as part of a sailing certification course I took at the North Texas Sailing School on Lake Ray Hubbard in Dallas. This is a great "how to sail" book and is the course material for the American Sailing Association (A.S.A.) course that I took. It did a good job of teaching all the requisite sailing skills and terminology. I would recommend it for general use in learning to sail at a basic skill level.

The Book includes numerous black and white photographs and lots of illustrations and diagrams to teach the skills required for the course. The book is divided into several sections that are used to teach three separate ASA certified courses. The sections are: Introduction to Sailing, Basic Sailing, Safety and Seamanship, Basic Seamanship Skills, Basic Coastal Cruising I, Basic Coastal Cruising II and Special Sailing Information. The book contains a good glossary and sailing terminology guide (very helpful for novices) and a good index. Review questions for each chapter or chapter series are included as well as answers to all the questions.

This is American Sailing Association textbook for beginning sailors and closely tied to the ASA certification program.

Why should you consider certification? Many people don't want to own a boat and prefer to charter. This is more economical than boat ownership.

To have the freedom to charter anywhere in the world you need to be able to prove to the charter companies that you know what you are doing. That is where certification comes in.

An ASA certification is a big plus when you are in Hawaii on vacation and want to rent a keelboat for a couple of hours. Or if you want to charter a big boat in the British Virgin Islands for a week. Try to do that without a certification! The major plus of this book is that it teaches you how to sail with all the information you need to learn in the proper order you should learn it. There is an advantage in learning the material in a time tested manner. This book gets the benefit of tried and true, tested, proven methods of sailing instruction that work. The material is presented in the order in which you should learn it

Reading the book and then taking the course will give you a jump start on your sailing skills.

Most sailors have knowledge like Swiss cheeze--with lots of holes. The books will give you knowledge like American cheeze--no holes.

Buy the book--you won't regret it. Read it and take the course for maximum effectiveness.

This is the path to skill, safety, and confidence on the water.

I bought the book for general sailing information. I found that a lot of the content is specifically geared to the certification requirements for ASA. If you are not going to certify or sail in the US then you will find yourself skipping US-specific pages and maybe losing on content in the process. Everything is spelled out to an excruciating detail. A book for those who haven't been in a boat ever before in their life.

Although the content of this book is useful, it is a difficult read because of poor editing. There are numerous typographical errors which could easily be corrected. Occasionally, there are terms used that have not been defined, although synomyms have been (e.g. "forestay" is referenced but only "headstay" is defined). However, one of the most cumbersome problems to deal with is the reference to illustrations. Illustrations are not numbered which makes it more difficult to find the proper one to look at on many pages where there are multiples. Additionally, there are numbered objects referenced in the text that do not appear with numbers in the illustrations. Certainly, with effort one can work their way through the text and learn from it, but it could be much smoother to do with a small amount of work from an editor.

I read this book early in my first experiences with keel-boats. It is written simply and brings the total novice up to the point where he or she can apply their knowledge with some minimal guidance and sail a boat. After a day or two with this type of experience, they would certainly be fine on their own, as long as they don't plan to challenge their skills. A great book, for the novice, but don't forget to invest a few bucks in references to help you advance beyond the basics!

This book covers the fundamentals, as agreed on by several authorities, succinctly and clearly. The thing that sets this apart from the rest is that it's layout is tailored to meet the requirements of the ASA and USGS certification and is used as their official textbook.

This book will teach you the baisics of sailing in a way thats easy to understand. Theirs a lot to learn if your a beginer. Gary Jobson did a good job of simplifying it a little.

Jobson makes sailing easy for anyone to understand. If you're new to the sport, this is the book to read. If it's the only book you're going to buy - you won't be sorry! I used this book as ASA certification, but that does not limit the usage for general knowledge.

Growing up on Long Island, I've been around alot of boats. Even here in sunny So Cal although I'm not right on the water, I'm not far from it. Most of the boating I've done though was basically for skiing, so I had no knowledge of sailing. I was on a sail boat but only along for the ride...I LOVED IT!..But I knew nothing, I didn't know a Jib from a Jibe, or a Close Reach from a Broad Reach. I wanted to learn all about it and get certified. So I signed up for my sailing lessons, which took several weeks for the basic certifications(since I could only go on weekends), and this was the book that was required(for the classes).

We did several chapters every weekend so during the week I would be able to read through to the next's weeks lessons.Sailing Fundalmentals explained everthing from "the rules of the road" to basic vocabulary, to raising the mainsail,getting the boat moving, and anchoring. Along with esstential saftey rules and regulations and , Knot tieing, and what to do in emergency situations. All these thing were covered in the classes on board the boat and reading the book first each week helped quite a bit with understanding the acutal lesson.

I highly reccommend this book in conjunction with lessons.I did find sometimes though that I had to read some sections a couple of times before I understood what they were saying. So I would also reccommend Basic Cruising (which seemed to be a bit of an easier read) to study for the certification tests. It is part of the US Sailing certification series.

Take the Plunge! I aced my tests and if I can do it, you can too(trust me on that)...Laurie

Very poorly edited & proofread; numerous errors & omissions make for distracting & frustrating reading that undermines confidence in the material. Buy, read and enjoy "The Complete Sailor" instead.