Review of Vigor's The Seaworthy Offshore Sailboat

Seaworthy Offshore Sailboat: A Guide to Essential Features, Handling, and Gear
by John Vigor
Paperback, 232 pages
International Marine, 2001
ISBN: 007137616X / 9780071376167

Intended for:

• Anyone buying a cruising sailboat
• Sailboat owners wanting to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their present boat
• All sailors preparing to go offshore or for an extended cruise

Vigor is one of the leading contemporary sailing writers and an expert on cruising sailboats, the author of many excellent books about boats and sailing. Here he shares a lifetime’s experience in a very well-written compendium of information about what is important in a cruising sailboat. He focuses on what really matters, not always the details, as he discusses different hulls, keels, rudders, and boat configurations, using good illustrations effective for both beginning and experienced sailors.

A few of the important chapters cover:

• Standing and running rigging
• Engines and propellers
• Navigation gear
• Anchors
• Safety equipment
• The galley
• Surviving heavy weather

See the Publisher's Site link above for the complete table of contents.

Highlights

Two of my favorite chapters are unique in books of this sort:

"Test Your Boat" is a rating system questionnaire that considers virtually every aspect of what makes a sailboat safe and efficient for offshore cruising and passage-making. This chapter leads you through 55 variables, each of which contributes to, or subtracts from, a boat being seaworthy. A numerical score is assigned for each of a given boat’s characteristics, and the sum is interpreted in terms of the boat’s overall seaworthiness. This allows you to easily compare different boats or to see where you can increase the seaworthiness of your own boat.

Vigor's Black Box Theory of seamanship has been widely quoted by sailors, and here is his own explanation of how it works. It’s a fascinating theory that seems borne out by experience, involving a sort of karma of seamanship. The essence is that every boat has a black box you can't see into that contains an unknown number of points. Every time you do something right, whether it's consulting your chart in preparation for entering an unfamiliar harbor or checking the tightness of screws in your rigging before anticipated heavy weather, a point goes into the box. The more safety-conscious you are, the more you practice good seamanship skills, the more points accumulate. In an emergency or difficult situation, even when you are doing everything correctly, you may need help, and at such times points are cashed in. You don't have control over this invisible box, and the naïve may call it luck, but these saved-up points might just save your life.

(See my own take on “what if” seamanship thinking.)

At 232 pages, this book can't tell you everything you need before going offshore, but it’s an excellent overview to get started. You'll still want specialized texts such as Toss's The Complete Rigger’s Apprentice, Coles' Heavy Weather Sailing, Calder's Marine Diesel Engines, and others - but Vigor's book belongs on the same shelf with these other classics.

Final note: the 4.5-star rating rather than a full 5 results only from the book's 2001 publication. (We hope a new edition is eventually forthcoming.) Newer electronics and communications gear are not included, and some other covered navigation and safety gear is becoming somewhat outdated. But overall, that's a small part of this book and does not detract from its strengths. Vigor's book overall clearly meets the goals of providing invaluable assistance to those seeking the best boat for offshore sailing or wanting to improve their own boat.