A guide to tuning the sails and rigs of yachts and small keelboats, featuring step-by-step instructions and more than 150 illustrations.

This heavily illustrated book chronicles sailing's unique heritage at the Naval Academy from 1845 onward. It begins in the days of fighting sail, when the reputation of a naval officer depended principally on his ability to handle a square-rigged ship and when sailing was the central activity of the school. Sailing offers vivid descriptions of training aboard the grand old practice ships - Constitution, Constellation, and Macedonian - under master mariners like Stephen B. Luce, then moves to the 1930s, when some energetic midshipmen revived the sailing program by entering intercollegiate competition and offshore racing. By 1995 the program was the most popular midshipman activity; academy sailors won the Dinghy National Championship four times in five years and the top prize in the Newport-to-Bermuda Race - after fifty-four years of trying! Written by a well-known sailor and longtime ocean-racing coach at the Academy, the book is filled with dramatic stories of great races and adventurous cruising. And it records the history of the famous Luders yawls Fearless, Dandy, and Flirt, and the donated boats Vamarie, Highland Light, and Royono, among others, plus sixty years of intercollegiate small-boat racing. It also documents the academy's development of the Quick Stop man-overboard rescue maneuver and its Safety at Sea seminar program, both of which have been adopted nationwide. Admiral McNitt credits the contributions and support of the Fales Committee, the Naval Academy Sailing Squadron, and other civilian groups who have provided invaluable support over many years. Appendixes list Dinghy National Championship winners, midshipman All-American sailors, the performance of academy boats inthe Bermuda race, and members of the Fales Committee.

This volume of photographs taken over the last few years is a worthy companion to the two previous works selected from the Beken archives and published by Harvill. It is a collection of beautiful images of yachts taken in both some of the world's most exotic venues and upon the Beken's doorstep -in the Solent. Here are Grand-Prix racing yachts, custom-designed race boats built with the latest technology, all of which race at elite level. Slightly less rarefied are the cruiser-racers, built for speed and comfort, many series-produced yachts from some of the world's top builders, as well as some former Grand-Prix boats whose days as greyhounds are over. Finally there are the classic yachts which may be as old as the nineteenth century and restored to their former glory, or amongst the most recent launchings. All have a unique elegance which is celebrated by the Beken photographs.