Sails for Cruising. Trim to Perfection

Fernhurst 1998, 94pp, b/w halftone illus.,1-898660-46-8, £11.95;

There must be other cruising sailors who, like myself, harbour a nagging guilt that they do not know as much about sail trim as they should. Of course, years ago when some of us started, there wasn't that much to it. "Keep her full and Bye" muttered the skipper, or "put your luffs to sleep" and that, aprt from a general eye for when the sails looked and felt about right, was all there was to it. Nowadays its a whole new science. I've probably been sailing around all these years with luff starvation and didn't even know it existed.

Anyway, if you tend towards the "bung 'em up and sit under 'em " school of sail trim then this book will bring you up to date. Modern sail cloth, sail shape, sheeting angles, the use of tell-tails, and all the rest of it are dealt with in digestible chunks, pitched at about the right level for the cruising sailor for whom performance is probably not the number one consideration. There are sections dealing with related matters like reefing systems, buying sails, and sail repair. The Fernhurst pictorial style, evident in other titles, is maintained in this ne addition to the range.

There is an American flavour to it in places (sailboat; dacron) but, then, you can't have evrything. BMF