Living Through The Gale

Heavy weather is a lurking spectre that most of us hope and plan to avoid, but not even internet forecasting can make it go away. Anyone intent on crossing oceans must be ready to deal with it if it comes, as well it may. Even well-informed inshore and continental-shelf sailors will inevitably be caught out sooner or later. The object of this slim, quickly absorbed volume is to give everyone, whatever their passage-making aspirations, a sound brief so that whether they find themselves at the wrong end of a force-six blow along the coast, or confronting serious waves far out at sea, they are fully aware of their options for taking it in their stride.Heavy weather is a lurking spectre that most of us hope and plan to avoid, but not even internet forecasting can make it go away. Anyone intent on crossing oceans must be ready to deal with it if it comes, as well it may. Even well-informed inshore and continental-shelf sailors will inevitably be caught out sooner or later. The object of this slim, quickly absorbed volume is to give everyone, whatever their passage-making aspirations, a sound brief so that whether they find themselves at the wrong end of a force-six blow along the coast, or confronting serious waves far out at sea, they are fully aware of their options for taking it in their stride.

Tom Cunliffe is Britain's leading sailing writer. A worldwide authority on cruising instruction, consultant for US Sailing and author of numerous maritime textbooks. He has been an RYA Yachtmaster Examiner since 1978 and has a gift of sharing his knowledge with good humour and an endless supply of tales of the sea.