Sailing Boats

Sailing Boats by Uffa Fox, published by Newnes in 1959, is the sort of book produced when sailing was still expected to involve ropes, judgement, weather, varnish, practical knowledge and occasionally being shouted at by somebody wearing a cap.

Uffa Fox was one of the great names in twentieth-century yacht and dinghy design: innovative, energetic and possessed of the sort of confidence usually associated with people who have spent enough time around boats to assume that most problems can be solved with timber, canvas, ingenuity and a slightly alarming willingness to experiment.

This book is a broad introduction to sailing boats and the ideas behind them, covering the form, handling and character of different types of craft in an era before fibreglass took over everything and every marina began to look as though it had been stocked from the same enormous mould.

There is particular pleasure in reading a sailing book from 1959 because the assumptions are wonderfully different. Boats are things to understand rather than merely own. The reader is expected to know what bits of them are called, why they are shaped the way they are and what might happen if one neglects something important at exactly the wrong moment.

Fox writes from a period when sailing design was changing rapidly, but still had one foot firmly in the traditional world of wooden construction, craftsmanship and accumulated seamanship. The result is a fascinating mixture of old knowledge and modern thinking, much of which still makes perfect sense and some of which now feels like advice transmitted from a slightly tougher species of human being.

There is also something reassuringly direct about older sailing books. They tend not to spend forty pages discussing lifestyle branding, marina restaurants or the correct shade of deck cushion. The boat itself is the interesting thing: how it sails, why it sails, how it behaves and whether it is likely to remain pointing in approximately the intended direction.

For anyone interested in sailing history, traditional boat design, small craft or the development of recreational sailing, this is a particularly appealing period piece. It is also a reminder that Uffa Fox was not merely a designer but one of the great popularisers of sailing, capable of making technical ideas seem practical rather than forbidding.

A useful book for sailors, model makers, marine historians, wooden-boat enthusiasts and anyone who enjoys old technical books in which the author assumes the reader might actually go outside and do something with the information.

Condition: Good. A sound vintage copy with normal signs of age and use. It has been around since 1959, so expecting absolute perfection would be slightly unreasonable. Expect the usual evidence of handling and shelf life, but nothing inconsistent with a book that has survived more than six decades without being dropped overboard.

No ISBN, because in 1959 the publishing industry had not yet decided that every book required a thirteen-digit identity number before being allowed out in public.

A characterful old sailing book by one of the most important British yacht designers of the twentieth century, and rather more interesting than many modern manuals containing approximately twelve pages of useful information padded out with photographs of expensive sunglasses.

Sold by Crappy Old Books — keeping old books afloat long after lesser paperbacks have quietly sunk without trace.

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