COOPER’S RECOMMENDED READING LIST
FOR OCEAN VOYAGING
In no particular order the following list represents some books I have read that have contributed to my understanding of, and approach to, making long voyages at sea. All of these voyages have in common the simplicity of the boats and the knowledge that the operators are the ones in charge of their fate. Most of them were undertaken without even
VHF, let alone
SSB, Sat Phones, computers, wind meters,
GPS, Weather fax’s,
life rafts,
radar and the other "stuff" that is deemed essential for going to sea to day. Except as noted voyages were in carvel planked wooden boats.
VOYAGING UNDER SAIL
Eric and Susan Hiscock: Compendium of designs, systems and techniques. The Hiscock's made a career of making long distance voyages after 1950.
ATLANTIC CRUISE IN WANDERER III
Hiscock again. One lap around the Atlantic in a wooden 30’ er in the early 60’s.
AROUND THE WORLD IN WANDERER III
Same Hiscock’s, same boat, longer voyage. W111 is presently owned by a German shipwright and is on her 4th circumnavigation. Surely a record in it’s own right.
TREKKA AROUND THE WORLD
John Guzzwell: One slow lap around the world in a 20’ boat built by the boat-building author. (He is still in practice in Vancouver somewhere). This passage was a record at the time that might still stand for the LOA. He took about 12 months off to sail back to England with the Smeeton’s but was famously dismasted with them in the Southern Ocean, see below.
ONCE IS NOT ENOUGH
Miles Smeeton: An account of the voyage with his wife and Guzzwell in the southern ocean, capsize, dis-masting, and passage to Chile under jury
rig.
VERTUE 35
Humphry Barton: An account of his east to west Trans-Atlantic passage, with one crew, in the mid-1950’s in a 25 foot LOA Vertue class, sans engine. The author was a prominent surveyor and partner in the design firm Laurent Giles, designers of the Vertue class. Includes an interesting section on recovering from a cabin splitting knockdown while weathering a Hurricane off Bermuda.
HEAVY WEATHER SAILIING
K. Adlard Coles: The later editions are edited and updated by Errol Bruce including the ’79 Fastnet Race storm. An anthology of Coles’ personal experiences and observations of heavy weather conditions with an analysis of the meteorological conditions before and during the storms and the tactics of his and other boats involved.
SOPRANINO
Patrick Elham & Colin Mudie: Two young English guys sail a 19 foot early ULDB from England to Spain, the Canaries, the Caribbean and up the eastern seaboard (in winter) to New York. Elham became a prominent delivery captain and Mudie is still a practicing Naval Architect.
50,000 MILES UNDER SAIL
Hal Roth: Things to contemplate after one lap of the Pacific in their modified 1970’s production fiberglass cruising boat. Discussion of what works, what is worthless and why. Roth and his wife have, like the Hiscock’s made a career of sailing and writing about it.
TWO AGAINST THE HORN:
The Roth’s again. A mid-70’s voyage to and around Cape Horn from San Francisco via the inside Chilean channels. This voyage is complete with a stranding and subsequent rebuilding of the yacht at a Chilean Navy shipyard. Ah, those were the days…
THE OCEAN SAILING YACHT in a couple of volumes
Donald Street: Mr. Street is an accomplished amateur surveyor of coast
lines (and boats), professional insurance agent for Lloyds of London and another character who has made a career of boats. These two volumes are similar to the Roth and Cruising Under Sail books but of a later vintage. Author of the popular cruising guides to the Caribbean.
VENTURESOME VOYAGES OF VOSS
Captain Voss was I think Canadian or maybe from the US northwest. He was a mariner at the turn of the 19th-20th century. He made several voyages all in small boats, under 30-35 feet. He was a professional mariner, like Slocum, if my memory serves me.
DEEP WATER & SHOAL
W.A. Robinson: The 1930’s story of a circumnavigation, with one crew, in an Alden design 32-foot ketch.
THE LONG WAY & THE LOGICAL ROUTE
Bernard Moitissier: Two books by a Frenchman who has attained mystical proportions in the French cruising fraternity. Born in Indochina in the 1920’s he grew up with Asian kids sailing junks. The two books are accounts of long distance, long term voyages, over 100 days each, in a 40’ steel ketch named Joshua, (which is presently a French Maritime Monument) complete with insights in the psychology of solitude.
THE SHIP WOULD NOT SAIL DUE WEST & ICE BIRD
David Lewis: The first is his account of competing in the first OSTAR against Hassler & Chichester, in again, a Vertue 25 foot class boat. The second, written after his 1972 circumnavigation of Antarctica in a 32-foot steel boat is, in my mind, more of an essay on how not to undertake a passage and is, I feel, interesting in that light.
A WORLD OF MY OWN
Robin Knox-Johnson: An account of his benchmark solo single-handed circumnavigation, undertaken in mid-late ‘60’s. 290 day’s at sea, non-stop in a 32 foot Tahiti Ketch.
DRAG DEVICE DATA BASE
By Victor Shane: An excellent source of information of great value to ocean sailors. It has a general overview of both the mindset required to venture offshore in small boats and, as the name says, a database of experiences of mariners using some kind of drag device. If you are not clear just what a Drag Device is you will be after reading this book. It is, to my mind, an American Express book, as in don’t leave home….
THE FALCON ON THE BALTIC
E.F. Knight: Across the English Channel thru the Dutch Canals into and around the Baltic in a 30’ ish LOA converted ships life boat in the 1870s. A grear fire-side yarn basically.
THE SWALLOWS & AMAZONS SERIES
A collection of 12 books by Arthur Ransome about the adventures of mainly two families of kids with some additional ringers growing up sailing in the UK in the 30’s. These books are excellent adventures (perfect reading on a damp day while cruising in Maine) and contain great lessons in seamanship.
RACUNDRA’S FIRST CRUISE
Another book by Ransome. His account of a late season cruise in a boat that was his dream for several years, built to his requirements and was several months late from the builder.
Joe Cooper
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