Lin and Larry Pardey’s many co-authored books include Cruising in Seraffyn, Care and Feeding of the Sailing Crew, The Self-Sufficient Sailor, and Storm Tactics.

First You Have to Row a Small Boat

Cochrane: The Real Master and Commander

Larry: Cochrane: The Real Master and Commander by David Cordingly is one of my favourites. I loved the Hornblower books, not for the blood-and-guts fighting but for the fine seamanship, excellent planning, and clever sailing tips I gleaned. To read Cochrane is to realize the exploits of Hornblower were not exaggerated but based almost completely on fact. Cochrane’s seamanship was amazing, as was his concern for the men under his command. His life was far more complicated than the fictional characters drawn from it. This book reads almost like a novel.

Beth Leonard’s books include books include Voyager’s Handbook, Blue Horizons, and Following Seas: Sailing the Globe, Sounding a Life

N by E

I read Rockwell Kent’s N by E when we were in Patagonia and was enchanted by Kent’s sparing prose and how it complimented his beautiful woodcut illustrations. Few books come so close to capturing the dream of all cruisers to go over the horizon, test oneself against the sea, and return, knowing oneself and one’s world more intimately and more completely than one ever has before. But Kent also captures the allure of high latitude cruising and depicts the indigenous Greenlanders he meets with compassion and great respect in an era when these people had not yet lost their native traditions. He gives us a glimpse of a world long since gone, but one that shares with our own the universal desire for human striving and personal betterment.