One Hand for Yourself, One for the Ship

A reference handbook of the essentials of single-handed sailing written for novice and experienced sailors. Jones offers information and advice on the science and art of solo sailing with humorous anecdotes and details. Topics range from accommodations and small-craft cooking to celestial navigation and hazardous conditions * Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal *
Tristan Jones needs no introduction to anyone interested in sailing and yachts. He has logged more miles and more adventure sailing alone than any other person alive in our time. He has crossed the Atlantic many times, often alone and has circumnavigated the globe in small boats. As such, One Hand for Yourself, One of the Ship, sub-titled The Essentials of Singlehanded Sailing is a course on singlehanded sailing by the man most qualified to give it. There are of course numerous books on singlehanded sailing, but few so readable and full of sheer commonsense and experience, laced with the highly personal perspective of a man who has lived his life on the sea. The book encompasses arguably every aspect of preparation, fear and technique needed for a person to sail alone, from rigs and rigging to catching fish; celestial navigation to stay alive. He even goes into great detail on the importance of taking along materials so that one can make an emergency mast in the event of demasting and tells you how to construct one. His advice regarding self-steering is something all cruising sailors should consider very carefully, His own vast experience has led him to believe that for serious cruising you should fit a wind-vane, preferably, in his own words, the Rolls-Royce of wind-vanes, the Aries. He says no electronic or electrical device that he has sailed with has proved 100 percent reliable and that in nine-tenths of the ports of the world, the hopes of finding someone who understands these things is about as realistic as the hope of getting Colonel Qaddafi to adopt the United States constitution. An invaluable book, written by a man described by the American magazine Motor Boat and Sailing as the Joshua Slocum of our age. * Sailing *