Cunliffe T. The Complete Day Skipper - Skippering with Confidence Right From the Start

Adlard Coles Nautical, 2016. — 192 p.TAKING CHARGE OF A YACHT LIFTS YOU OUT OF YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE more comprehensively than any other form of recreation. The experience can be relaxing, exciting, exhilarating, perhaps occasionally even daunting. No two trips are the same, but whatever combination a passage delivers, it will ask you to dip into the three major factors that contribute to who you are. That is why skippering is so absorbing.
Sailing inevitably involves some degree of physical activity. It may not crank up your fitness like three nights a week in the gym but, depending on the boat you choose, the process works you out as much as you want it to, and it certainly keeps you supple. Navigating safely places certain demands on the intellect, and the tactical decisions can sometimes plumb core levels of the personality; but making a passage isn’t all brawn and brain. It’s also about being at one with the natural world. If the wind is in the west and the tide is flooding, the combination may be useful or supremely inconvenient, but nothing you can do will alter either, until the elements roll round in their own sweet time. Accepting the ancient forces of the planet came easily to seamen in the past; it’s harder for generations accustomed to centrally heated homes, the internal combustion engine and the internet, yet to do so is critical for success. It is also, to steal a phrase, the beginning of wisdom. This, coupled with the ever-changing beauty of the sea and the shoreline, furnishes the essential magical element of skippering.
This book does not set out to transform you into a Master Mariner overnight. It has been constructed to deliver a soundly based confidence in essential skills through individually achievable goals.
Tom Cunliffe