Coffee Table Book of: The Sport of Sailing (Hardcover)

Coffee Table Book of: The Sport of Sailing is a large format book of sailing, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: dinghies and keelboats, old gaff, lateen and square rigs, the gear of rope and canvas, buoys, moorings and lighthouses, sailors anonymous in plain clothes, and the harbour and the sea from dawn to starlight.

Making and care have their own quiet places: overlapping clinker planks with copper rivets and carvel planks with caulked seams, the bare curved wooden frames of a boat rising from its keel in an empty shed, caulking tools and oakum, a fid and a marlinspike, a canvas sail corner with a hand sewn brass cringle, a zigzag seam in white sailcloth, a sailmaker's palm and needle, and a wide sail spread flat on the floor of an empty loft.

Harbours, marks and the changing sea run through the book: red and green channel buoys, a white mooring buoy, a weed grown mooring chain, a tall channel post in morning fog, lighthouses on a rocky island and a dusk headland, a rowing tender at a quay ladder, a gull on a post, a pontoon in summer rain, frost on an open boat at dawn, a mast reflected in ripples, gust patches on a calm sea, white horses in a moderate breeze, a breaking wave, a boat at anchor over clear turquoise shallows, a full moon rising over dark water, a starry anchorage, and a few small sailors seen from far off.

Short notes run through the book, on boats and their rigs, rope, canvas and the sailmaker, finding the way by compass, light and star, and the tide and the weather: the centreboard pivots up into the hull, so a dinghy can sail in shallow water, a gaff sail has four corners, its top edge held up by a spar called the gaff, carvel hulls are planked edge to edge, the seams caulked to keep the water out, and a keelboat carries a heavy ballast keel that helps keep it upright.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a hardcover with the art printed on the case.

Publisher - Cedar Pine Editions

Language - English

Case Bound - PPC

Contributors

By author

Dimitri Smith

Published Date - 2026-11-03

ISBN - 9671456008981

Dimensions - 27.9 x 21.6 x 1.3 cm

Page Count - 100