Survive the Savage Sea

First You Have to Row a Small Boat

The Voyager's Handbook

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Jimmy Cornell’s many books include World Cruising Routes, A Passion for the Sea, and the just- published World Cruising Destinations.

A Race Too Far

My favourite book is a recent publication: A Race Too Far by Chris Eakin.  It is the story of the first round-the-world race, a spell-binding tale of immense courage, heroic sacrifice, and profound despair whose reverberations are still felt by the survivors of this epic drama and whose painful memories have not been alleviated by the passing of time. The Golden Globe trophy and the considerable prize of £5,000 (approximately £100,000 in today’s money) wa offered to the first person to sail around the globe without stopping anywhere. The rules were very simple, any type of sailing boat was allowed and participants had to start between 1 June and 31 October 1968. Several participants have written their own accounts and there have been a number of books written about this unique race but none conveys better the excitement and drama of this modern odyssey than Chris Eakin, who skilfully weaves together the disparate strands of a heart-rending tale of human tragedy and redemption of Homeric dimensions.

Derek Lundy’s books include Way of a Ship: A Square-Rigger Voyage in the Last Days of Sail and Godforsaken Sea: Racing the World’s Most Dangerous Waters.

Offshore Sailing

Here’s a few lines about a book I like very much: Offshore Sailing: 200 Essential Passagemaking Tips by Bill Seifert (, with Daniel Spurr) is a supremely useful and practical guide to getting a sailing vessel ready for an offshore passage. Seifert has vast experience and he makes each tip — from rigging a boom preventer, to providing engine space ventilation, to how to make the best time on passages, to handy offshore recipes — easy to understand and apply. Anyone planning a passage out of sight of land should refer to Seifert’s essential manual. I’’m using Seifert myself at the moment in hopes of heading out into the big blue Pacific sometime soon.