Have you been upstairs at BYC lately? With four cartons of books recently donated anonymously, the library has probably expanded from when you last took a peek. They required some shelf space expansion and reorganization of some categories to handle the overflow.
The new additions include several books in the maritime disaster category, so now there’s a whole shelf of the “What could Possibly go Wrong?” sea story genre, most of them true.
Fortunately, donated book collections always include a healthy dose of books we already have, so there are some nice additions to the “25-cent Library Duplicates” shelf in the downstairs lobby.
These include some classics, such as:
Sailing Alone Around the World, by Joshua Slocum. The first known solo circumnavigation, 1895-1898. Belongs on every sailor’s bookshelf. (But remember, he was getting paid by the word...)
The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst. An analysis of a one-way trip around the world that never left the South Atlantic. Crowhurst has a posthumous cult following and figures prominently in most nautical trivia competitions.
Heavy Weather Sailing, by Adlard Coles. A classic on the subject, and a lot of it is still good advice. It belongs on your bookshelf.
There are a few more duplicate books by the elites of long-distance cruising and racing up for grabs: Francis Chichester, Eric Hiscock, Lin and Larry Pardey. Plus Steven Callahan’s modern liferaft survival story, Adrift. I read this one just before sailing in the Singlehanded Transpac, and it was full of good info that informed what safety and survival gear I brought (like more fish hooks!)
Also of interest is a Bowditch for Yachtsmen: Piloting, a subset of the American Practical Navigator. Coastal piloting, pre-GPS, is actually a lot more complex than celestial, in my humble opinion. This is a very thorough treatment.
We also have three copies of Latitude Hooks and Azimuth Rings to unload, a book of instructions for building your own modern and ancient navigation instruments. Learn how a backstaff works. (I ordered one copy from Amazon but they sent me five...)
More contributions to the library are always welcome. If we already have a copy, it will keep the downstairs duplicates shelf well stocked.
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