Stop sniggering at the back, there. I'm sure everyone has wanted to horsewhip a reviewer after buying a book with great reviews on the back - side-splitting! - and it's the literary equivalent of what you pump out of your holding tank. Well, I'm mid-way through an hilarious book. None of the comments say it's side-splitting, but then you wouldn't expect it of a rigging primer. If you own a boat and haven't got The Rigging Handbook by Brion Toss, you're missing a big bookshelf asset and a way of demistifying a large and frankly scary gap in most people's sailing knowledge. To become a commercially endorsed yachtmaster here in the UK you have to spend day breathing through the Royal Yachting Association's diesel engine course. Pass mark: to have a pulse at the end. Your expected knowledge of rigging? Nowt, as we say here. So you can become a skipper for hire knowing nothing but 8 RYA approved knots and nothing about the sticks and strings that are inimical to making a yacht do its thang.
Now last year I bossed a 56 foot ketch. Two masts, lots of thumb-thick stainless steel wire and salt and UV-abused running rigging. Over the course of 11,000 miles and a few refits I'd picked up some drumhead rigging knowledge, but, but. It was a hole in my knowledge, and I knew it. My mate recommended Toss, and having owned this book now for a month, I recommend him too. For a start, he knows his stuff. I don't now claim to be a rigger, but getting aboard a boat I now know what it all does, where the strains are, where the problems are likely to occur. Strategies for what to do if a shroud goes bang, if halyard goes rogue. And it's the basic stuff: I can splice, can't I? Well, you don't splice everyday as skipper of a modern boat and like all skills, it rusts and suddenly you find you can't when you need to. And no the sheet bend isn't the best way to attach two ropes together. It's quick and easy in a rush, but Brion takes you though knots that are a hundred times more reliable.
Knots, splices, coils, the engineering of rigging, splicing wire around thimbles, whipping, serving, emergencies, tales, a bit of philosophy thrown in ("William oof Ockham would have made a good rigger" - now that is class.) but most importantly a deep love of the subject written from a deeper yet well of knowledge.
The drawings are fantastic, the language a joy to read and it's funny. The bloke who removed a broken masthead with an AK 47, the unerring eye for sailing cliche "I was running down the foredeck, see...", the follies of the 'butane backsplice'. It ain't cheap, but if it saves you a coil of braid on braid, stops you needing a visit from a rigger or teaches you to splice thimbles into your own halyards it'll save you the purchase price and from there on, it's all gravy. And the joy, oh the joy. I skippered a delivery recently, a 31 ketch which had gone into gentle decline because of previous owner illness. Getting aboard, the running rigging was suffering: the mizzen topping lift was unravelling, I backspliced it as a temporary measure. Most of the lines were cows tailed at the end: before the first day at sea was done, they were all whipped. But most importantly, I had a sense of what those two sticks and all the wire, all the rope meant. If you sail out of sight of land, buy it.
Now. Having inflicted Tony Blair on the world (I didn't vote for him, I hasten to add) I'm reluctant to meddle in your politics, but having read a bit, followed hustings, read a few mags and blogs, all your would-be Presidents scare me. And having read The Rigging Handbook, I think you should rise up as a nation, march to Port Townsend, Washington, hoist him on your shoulders, march him to Washington DC and by acclamation make him President. But I get the impression he loves his loft, loves his rigging. I, for one am glad he does.
Every Christmas, I create a wishlist on Amazon. 90% of the items on the list are sailing books, videos, calendars and general sailing stuff. My extended family doesn't get it as they don't go in for sailing much, but they humor me by pecking away at a few items on the list.
Petersburg via... via well, pretty much every country on the way. He is accompanied by two old friends, one called Bob, and variety of other chums who join parts of the 3 month cruise.
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