The Voyager’s Handbook: The Essential

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The Voyagers Handbook The Essential

“Belongs in the bookshelf of each cruising vessel.”—Blue Water Sailing

“If you are severe in regards to that extended voyage, read The Voyager’s Handbook.”—Sailing

“Every now and then a new voice emerges in the world of sailing creative writing of recognized artisti value that stands out, a voice that is both clear and of lasting quality. The aspect of such a new voice is something of an event, and that’s what we’d call the publication of The Voyager’s Handbook.”—Blue Water Sailing

This inspirational and comprehensive manual leads you step by step through each aspect of choosing, planning, and following the voyager’s life. Using three example boats representing three cruising lifestyles—Simplicity, Moderation, and Highlife—Beth Leonard helps make your bluewater dreams come true, whether you’re sailing on a shoestring or a CEO’s pension. Starting with the things you can’t do without—an enthusiastic crew, a seaworthy boat, and, of course, money—Leonard offers sage counsel on how to select crewmembers who are genuinely consecrated to the voyage, how to choose the right boat for you, and how to find just the right approach to financing your voyage and making the most of each dollar spent.

Managing life from a drifting home and keeping that home livable, seaworthy, and safe requires you to become, among other things, the ship’s purser, engineer, doctor, cook, and cruise director. You’ll discover how to prepare for these new roles and put necessary instrumentation and arrangements in place before you untie your docklines. This exquisitely elaborate guide also helps you master the accomplishments you’ll need to handle a boat at sea with a little crew, including

Weather forecasting
Passage planning
Watchkeeping
Heavy-weather sailing
Emergency management
Midocean repairs

Complete with dozens of easy-to-use graphs and tables for quick reference, along with the hard-won wisdom of experienced cruisers, The Voyager’s Handbook is the extreme resource for anybody who is planning, preparing for, or just dreaming in regards to a great adventure on the high seas.

From the Back Cover

“Belongs in the bookshelf of each cruising vessel.”—Blue Water Sailing

“If you are severe when it comes to that extended voyage, read The Voyager’s Handbook.”—Sailing

This inspirational and comprehensive manual leads you step by step through each aspect of choosing, planning, and following the voyager’s life. Using three example boats representing three cruising lifestyles—Simplicity, Moderation, and Highlife—Beth Leonard helps make your bluewater dreams come true, whether you’re sailing on a shoestring or a CEO’s pension. Starting with the things you can’t do without—an enthusiastic crew, a seaworthy boat, and, of course, money—Leonard offers sage counsel on how to select crewmembers who are veritably devoted to the voyage, how to choose the right boat for you, and how to find just the right approach to financing your voyage and making the most of each dollar spent.

Managing life from a drifting home and keeping that home livable, seaworthy, and safe requires you to become, amongst other things, the ship’s purser, engineer, doctor, cook, and cruise director. You’ll discover how to prepare for these new roles and put necessary instrumentation and arrangements in place before you untie your docklines. This exquisitely elaborate guide also helps you master the achievements you’ll need to handle a boat at sea with a little crew, including

Weather divination
Passage planning
Watchkeeping
Heavy-weather sailing
Emergency management
Midocean repairs

Complete with dozens of easy-to-use graphs and tables for quick reference, along with the hard-won wisdom of experienced cruisers, The Voyager’s Handbook is the extreme resource for any individual who is planning, preparing for, or just dreaming when it comes to a great adventure on the high seas.

Since completing a three-year, 35,000-mile circumnavigation of the globe with her partner, Evans Starzinger, in 1995, Beth Leonard has lectured widely, written for leading sailing magazines, and outfitted a new 50-foot aluminum cutter aboard which she and Evans once again set sail in 1999. They logged an further and added 50,000 miles at sea over the following six years, much of it in the world’s high latitudes, including Labrador, Iceland, Scotland, Cape Horn, and east through the Southern Ocean to Australia.

See the world from your boat

“A voyaging handbook with soul. Beth Leonard is a pleasure to read. No one else has captured the yin and yang of voyaging so well.”—Caribbean Compass

“Required reading. Beth Leonard is a fresh and authorized voice.”—SAIL

“In her own journey, Beth Leonard has become not only a fantasti sailor, but also a fine teacher. I know this because I’ve learned so much from her.”—from the Foreword by Herb McCormick, Latitude 38 and Cruising World

“When other boats scurry back to their berths just in front of the setting sun, you want to keep sailing. You want your tracks to be the only ones on a perfective sand beach of a deserted tropical island. You want to see the green flash, taste coconut milk from the husk, watch the fish dance at dusk, and portion a feast with new friends from other cultures. This book may support you get there. It is written for coastal and fixed offshore cruisers who want to make the transition to long-term voyaging. I have tried to capture everything I wish I had known on that June day when we basi sailed out from under Newport Bridge.”—from the Prologue by Beth Leonard

About the Author

Beth A. Leonard has won awards from the Ocean Cruising Club and the Cruising Club of America. A usual writer, she lectures around the country. She and her husband have circumnavigated the globe twice beneath sail, logging 85,000 blue water miles.

Most helpful customer reviews

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful.
The MBA goes sailing
By San Franciso Sailor
A few of the other customer reviews have pointed out that the author may not be the most experienced sailor in the world, and that her circumnavigation experience was limited to relatively non-dramatic tradewinds sailing. While this may be true, what I found most helpful about this book was the author’s open-minded analytical approach to the issues, and the fact that she backed her opinions up with her surveys and “research” results. She also presents various alternative solutions to the reader- for example when she specs out how a cruiser can be outfitted in either a simple, a moderate, or a complex way. This is very helpful in a field that tends to be dominated by more “fundamentalist” writers such as the Pardeys or the Dashews who bring their own conclusions very much to the table when they share their experiences. In that sense, I think her relative lack of experience can be a virtue, in that she seems to have kept an open mind.

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful.
Getting ready to go
By A
This book was by far the most complete guide to cruising and living aboard that I was able to find. As long-time charter boat people, in mid-1999 we purchased a sailboat in France and sailed to the Caribbean, where we now live. Before leaving, we read everything we could find for advice. This book was far more complete than anything else we could find. We found that we had much less experience and knowledge than we had thought before we read it. No book has ALL the answers for living aboard and sailing, but this comes the closest.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
The most thorough and readable cruising handbook to date
By A
We bought our cruising boat one year ago. Three years before that we started buying/reading every cruising “how to” book out there. Tania Ebei’s book, Maiden Voyage, got the whole dream thing started, and this book finalized it. You’ll find each chapter complete and filled with relevant and detailed information. I have yellow highlights throughout the entire book. I refer to it monthly, especially the monthly maintenance section. It got to be my bible, until my husband thought he’d explode if I offered “Beth said…” during any of his projects. OK, so I gave some other books a shot, some written for the woman cruiser, and I joined cruising associations, but none of them have come close to the first rate information Beth provided. As detailed and meticulous as you could ask for. Before I start a project for the first time, I still take Beth out and read her chapter on whatever it is, and believe me, she addresses it all from the cost of cruising, what equipment you need and what it will cost, what each piece of equipment will draw from you batteries, how to provision, how to package the foods to prevent moisture and cockroaches etc…Buy this book!

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