Customer Reviews

Seaworthy Offshore Sailboat: A Guide to Essential Features, Handling, and Gear

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In The Seaworthy Offshore Sailboat, author John Vigor covers the requirements for any sailboat venturing beyond coastal waters. He first defines what makes a boat suitable for offshore sailing, then provides a virtual checklist of improvements that can "harden" a boat in order to meet the requirements for heavy weather sailing. In one chapter there is are 56 questions to test the fitness of any boat. The final score on this test helps the sailor determine whether or not a boat is blue water capable. He also addresses the operation of a boat on a long voyage, and what should be expected in the way of weather. Provisioning is also addressed in this book. An appendix covers the Catalina 27, a model that has over 6000 boats manufactured. His assesment is that this boat is the "Volkswagen Beetle" of the boating world, and is a very seaworthy choice for it's price and size. He tells of Patrick Childress making a solo circumnavigation in a Catalina 27. Any boat owner contemplating a long offshore cruise would be well advised to read this book before venturing out without making the improvements suggested.

You can easily pick up three books on offshore sailing and get three separate opinions of what type of boat you need. A fast boat will get across the pond faster. A big boat adds stability and can carry lots of accessories like auxiliary generators and water makers. John's theory is that you should get a boat that can be handled well by a small crew and tough enough to handle any weather that you are likely to run into. Since his opinion parallels my own, I can only assume that he is obviously a sailing genius. This book is highly recommended for anyone contemplating a voyage over the horizon.

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.

This is an outrageously thorough, understandable, complete, easy to understand book. It will give you more knowledge about things to look for in buying or outfitting a boat, more questions to ask yourself about how you have equipped your boat and what you can do to make it safer and more easily handled, than anything else I have read. Easy reading, consise yet complete. If you read with a hiliter half the book will be yellow. You will want to refer to it often, and re-read it more than once. Contains useful references for topics requiring more in-depth discussion such as medical/psychological issues, self-steering, and heavy weather, although it has excellent discussions of these topics for starters; including a particularly good storm build up scenario which helps one put the contents of Adlard Cole's Heavy Weather Sailing in perspective.

This book presents the detail descriptions of what makes a boat seaworthy. This is immediately followed by suggestions on what to improve and methods to go about doing so. The author does not just turn you over to the yard but rather recommends the procedure to be done. A welcomed addition to my library and a recommended read for anyone considering going offshore.

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."

I purchased this book for my Kindle and my advice there is DON'T. This book is technical and difficult for a beginning sailor although the information therein is outstanding. If you do not have a nautical background you will find yourself either baffled at times or running for your nautical dictionary (you do have one, don't you?) Mr Vigor knows his subject well and you will learn a great deal if you stick with it. I believe that this is an outstanding book and well worth your investment if you are serious about offshore sailing (and surviving it). Having said that, I wasted my money buying the Kindle version. As I said, this book can be quite technical and it is replete with drawings and charts. The Kindle version does not reproduce the drawings and charts at all well and this is quite frustrating. Moreover, the formatting is absolutely awful with line breaks seemingly inserted at random and nonsense symbols substituted for symbols such as the pound sign and so forth. Often one is left guessing at what was actually meant. In short, do not waste your money on the Kindle version unless you just plan to read the book for fun. If you are planning on using the book to plan an actual voyage or just make your boat better for near-shore sailing, spend the money on the hard cover version. You will be happier.

Don't waste your money, and by all means, don't follow his heavy weather advice, which is written as a fictional account of a small sailboat in a storm -- cutting loose a Jordan Series Drogue and surfing down massive waves a la Moitessier is just ridiculous. It has to be fictional because it's obvious Vigor never did it himself -- after all, he's still alive.

Not only is his advice ridiculous, it's dangerous. Read works by real sailors like Hal Roth, Bernard Moitessier, Pete Goss, Richard Henderson, Beth Leonard, and Lin and Larry Pardey if you want to learn about sailing. Their recommendations are based on actual experience, not fictional accounts. But remember that many of their works were written before the Jordan Drogue was invented. So, for instance, just because Moitessier didn't mention it, doesn't mean he wouldn't recommend it today if he were still alive.

I found the book was a good basic summary of most things that make a boat capable of safe offshore passages. While nothing "groundbreaking" it is exactly the kind of book you need to read before you go buying your first offshore sailing boat. The really good thing is that it won't have you spending thousands on unnecessary gadgets and dispels a lot of hype and trends; just easy to understand down-to-earth advice.

While I actually bought it after I purchased a small cruiser, it at least confirmed the boat will make a perfect pocket offshore passage maker (which the design has an established reputation) and has pointed me in the direction of a few necessary modifications on a sensible budget.

Although ostensibly about identifying the many the features neccesary to have in a blue water capable sailboat (which it does very comprehensively), this book is as much about the techniques and finer points of ocean sailing. The book is very well written and illustrated and would be invaluable to anyone who is thinking about buying a fully seaworthy yacht or making a trans oceanic cruise.