Sail
& Sextant
A Practical Handbookof Coastal Navigation
Sail &
Sextant.
Tom Cunliffe's working manual. The book the sail-lane leans on — passage planning, tide sets, compass deviation, the quiet grammar of staying off a lee shore.
The sail lane doesn't need more romance — it needs competence. Cunliffe is the quiet teacher: no heroics, no weather-porn, just the actual working craft of moving a small boat from one piece of coast to another without getting embarrassed. I wanted the first book of the year to be one that makes me more useful on Thursday, not one that makes me more eloquent on Sunday.
Reading it slowly. One chapter per evening, with the chart for the Tarifa-to-Cádiz passage open on the desk next to it. The point is not to finish; the point is to still be able to plot the passage a month after I've finished.
Chapters · By Weight
— underlining density
Highlights
14 marked— what I underlined
“The chart is not the sea. It is the best argument we have made about the sea, drawn in ink, and it owes you nothing.”
p. 14 · Charts & the Compass“A good passage plan is the one you still believe in at three in the morning, in rain, when the instruments disagree.”
p. 111 · Passage Planning“Deviation is the compass's honest self-portrait. You do not correct the compass for lying. You correct yourself for expecting it not to.”
p. 27 · Charts & the Compass“The tide does not move. It is the ocean, arriving. The harbour simply stands still long enough to notice.”
p. 76 · Tides & Tidal StreamsYear of Reading
— one cell per week
Next On The Shelf
23 to go— the rest of the year
Deep
James Nestor · 304 p.
The Outlaw Ocean
Ian Urbina · 560 p.
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
Samin Nosrat · 480 p.
Boys in the Boat
Daniel James Brown · 416 p.
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius · 254 p.
The Perfect Storm
Sebastian Junger · 240 p.