The definitive 10 sailing books

[Mark]

Aquaplane's got me thinking. If you were building a sailing library from scratch what would your first ten buys be to form the core of your collection?

You can't have pilot guides or almanacs but fiction/non both welcome.

My offering:

1) Anything by HW Tillman
2) "Last Grain Race" - Eric Newby
3) "Sailing Alone Around the World" - Joshua Slocum
4) "Adrift" - By Steve Callahan
5) "A World of My Own" Robin Knox-Johnston
6) "Ice Bird" David Lewis
7) Anything by Moitessier
8) "Magic of the Swatchways" Maurice Griffiths
9) "The Fastnet Disaster And After" - Bob Fisher
10) "A Voyage For Madmen" - Peter Nichols

Let the discussion (argument) commence!

[Silkie]

I'll bet that only a very few authors will come up again and again and that it's probably a sufficiently personal matter that most lists will have many unique entries.

In no particular order:

1. Patrick O'Brian - anything to start you off but ideally you should have all 20-odd sailing books.
2. Eric Hiscock - again they're all good and you should aspire to owning all.
3. Bernard Moitessier - ditto
4. Peter Bruce/Adlard Coles - Heavy Weather Sailing. You really can't be taken seriously unless you have a copy.
5. Miles and Beryl Smeeton - Once is Enough.
6. Arthur Ransome - We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea is my favourite or it might be Racundra's First Cruise.
7. E.A. (Peter) Pye - Red Mainsail if for no other reason than the introduction to my vocabulary of the exclamation "We sail for pleasure!" to be used on deciding not to continue beating into F6.
8. Donald Ridler - Erik the Red.
9. Erskine Childers - The Riddle of the Sands.
10. Jonathan Raban - Passage to Juneau or Coasting for that matter.

I would have had to find room for TLGR, SAATW and RKJ if Markie hadn't included them above and of course you can get Shrimpy as a pdf.

That must be nearly 50 definitive sailing books.

[sawdoc]

Aquaplane's got me thinking. If you were building a sailing library from scratch what would your first ten buys be to form the core of your collection?

You can't have pilot guides or almanacs but fiction/non both welcome.

My offering:

1) Anything by HW Tillman
2) "Last Grain Race" - Eric Newby
3) "Sailing Alone Around the World" - Joshua Slocum
4) "Adrift" - By Steve Callahan
5) "A World of My Own" Robin Knox-Johnston
6) "Ice Bird" David Lewis
7) Anything by Moitessier
"Magic of the Swatchways" Maurice Griffiths
9) "The Fastnet Disaster And After" - Bob Fisher
10) "A Voyage For Madmen" - Peter Nichols

Let the discussion (argument) commence!

Haven't read Tillman or Newby but I would not disagree with any of your other choices. In some way these books are like a foundation course explaining how and where sailing for pleasure has arrived at where we are today.