“We are sailing, we are sailing, across the water…”

Cruisers’ AA by Jackie and Noel Parry

http://www.amazon.com/Cruisers-AA-Accumulated-Acumen-ebook/dp/B00OQ938WI/

Cruisers’ Accumulated Acumen is a guide in 27 chapters of over 1800 helpful hints and tips on sailing made alive with a hundred anecdotes bringing alive their adventures during their 9 years afloat.

ASIN: B00OQ938WI

$3.99 or free currently on Amazon Prime

Also available in paperback for $26.99

ISBN-13: 978-0987551504   Pictures https://jackieparry.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/cyclone-diagram-single-picnew.jpg?w=960&h=720

My sailing experience is limited to school days tacking up the River Avon from Tewskesbury to Stratford-on-Avon in the UK although I have a silver medal in my cabinet from a race on a lake in Peterborough. Those few years of being on the water were brought back by my reading this book so thanks Parrys for that!

Advice that wouldn’t have been possible when I was a schoolchild includes having a pack of baby nappies on board – nothing better for absorbing spillages. Also, we discovered when my wife’s nose wouldn’t stop bleeding that they’ll take a lot of blood!

Did you know about the problem of using stainless steel bolts with aluminium? Haha – I kind of did because of my science background but I hadn’t realized how serious the problem can be on sailing cruisers until I read the section on galvanic corrosion and electrolysis. Well done for making a potentially deep subject easy to understand and with practical advice.

Chapter 22 is on Theft and Piracy. Plenty of sensible advice here along with Jackie and Noel’s own theories on how to thwart thieves and pirates. No suggestions of acquiring heavy-duty sonic projectors—after all we are talking sailing cruisers not liners. A problem with piracy and small-time thieves is that ordinary folk are made to feel vulnerable by the media. It’s inevitable that they highlight the few terrible incidents. Jackie points out that after 9 years, 50 countries and over 70,000 miles they’d not met a pirate and only dealt with a couple of minor theft issues. It can happen to any of us any time. I was walking with my wife in a crowded Malaga, Spain when a man pushed up against me. I thought, hey, he’s being rather fresh then realized his hand was in my pocket. I grabbed hold of his wrist and yelled as loud as I could. He yanked his hand away and ran but the crowd grabbed and held him until the police arrived. He wouldn’t have got much. Like the advice in Cruisers’ AA my wallet contained the bare minimum for an enjoyable day out.

The book is brought to a finish with many pages of useful references from sarongs to navigation aids, weather to anchoring techniques.

Finally, there are other groups of readers than sailors for this book. I am a writer of fiction and I’ve written stories for anthologies and magazines that involve a techie knowledge I didn’t have to ensure meaningful dialogue and action. This isn’t nerdy it’s important, at least to me. So if you are a writer of contemporary sea-faring tales, you’ll need this reference too.

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