Learn to Sail in a Weekend - John Driscoll

This book is the book I failed to learn to sail from in the '90s. I tried sailing with my father in my teens and never got into it. When my father found out I was trying it again, he gave me the book!

This is classic early '90s Dorling Kindersley, with a graphic design style that both continues through to their books today, and has an incredible '90s feel to it. You won't be surprised to hear that the fashions in the photos are nice and '90s. Illustrating how to learn to sail using a Laser seems a little cruel, but there you go.

The book is "in association with the RYA", and the advice seems sound enough - with much more content than the modern RYA start sailing book. As usual, it suffers from having to explain everything for both aft-mainsheet and centre-mainsheet rigging, and some of the steps are a bit obscured by the heavy "labelled diagram" approach, but generally it's pretty clear.

The "learn to sail in a weekend" structure does match the pattern of a RYA level 1 course. There are copious pictures and illustrations throughout, but I must admit I really wouldn't want to learn from a book alone. A course, every time!

The last few pages go beyond the initial weekend, and I'm amused to see that it covers roll tacks and roll gybes, which were missed out of my Level 1 and 2 courses, and I've only recently had a go at.

Posted 2019-08-17.