If you don't mind reading text, along with a few illustrations, on the small screen of your device, History of Sailing is an educational app that provides an overview of many aspects of sailing. This ebook is a title in the "History of" Series of apps.
Version reviewed: 1.02 for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad
Available also for Android devices
$0.99
Key Features
The content is organized in 10 chapters:
- Introduction
- History
- Physics
- Points of sail
- Basic sailing techniques
- Sailing hulls and hull shapes
- Types of sails and layouts
- Sailing terminology
- Sailing regulations
- Sailboat racing
Almost all of the text content comes from Wikipedia under a Creative Commons License. It is generally well written but is introductory and better suited for people new to sailing than to experienced sailors.
The Downside
As noted above, this material is introductory, containing on average 10 screens or fewer of content per chapter. So you can read through it fairly quickly - though it may still be worth $0.99 to those who want it on their smart device for reading on the go.
My complaints:
- There is only one illustration per chapter - and many of them are not particularly useful. For example, the chapter on basic sailing techniques has a simple photo of a sailboat - there are no illustrations for the techniques described. You'd do better with illustrated web pages about sailing technique.
- A strange design issue is that the chapter-opening illustration remains covering the top half of the screen while you scroll through the reading on the lower half. In actuality, then, the content uses only half of what is already a small screen on a smartphone or other small device, forcing you to scroll almost constantly.
- Navigation functions only by opening a chapter from the table of contents and then scrolling down. There is no search function nor index to jump to a topic. So you may not easily discover, for example, that knots are listed in the Terminology chapter or that many other terms are defined in chapters other than the Terminology chapter.
Conclusions
As long are your expectations are not too high, this app has some value for neophytes wanting to learn some fundamentals about sailing.
More experienced sailors would do better with other apps, such as Boater's Pocket Reference for detailed information on topics like navigation or knots, or Sailsim for how sailboats move through different points of sail.
