If you are interested in learning to sail, this is the perfect first book

I was at the marina the other day and met a guy who had just purchased his first sailboat.  We began talking about his new boat.  When I asked him if he was going to take it out tomorrow he said no because his instructor was going to be out of town and he’d only sailed it once before.  I began to  reminisce about my first boat and how I learned to sail.  Here in eastern North Carolina, we didn’t have any instructors within 100 miles 35 years ago.

In 1972 I purchased my first sailboat, a Helms 25.  You’ve probably never heard of a Helms, but its just like any other boat; it had all the same parts and sailed on the same principles.  Anyway, when I was thinking about buying this boat, I had one problem; I’d never stepped foot on a sailboat in my life, had no idea of what made it go or what anything on it was called.  All I knew was I wanted to get away from my business and phone and this thing looked like the perfect ticket.  I told the dealer if he could show me how to sail I would buy his boat.  He said anybody can learn to sail in only a few minutes, you just need to know the theory, it only looks complicated.

So, the next day the dealer put me in touch with George, a customer who also purchased a Helms a few years earlier.  George agreed to take me out to show me the ropes. It was about 5:30 and the sun was was going down at 7:00, so we didn’t have much time for learning.  Well, Ole George was a retired engineer and he didn’t waste much time before he was explaining Bernoulli’s principle, sailing on a beam reach, demonstrating  tacks and performing a safe jibe maneuver.  In fact we where only on the water for 45 minutes and the lesson was over.  All that was left was practice. I went back and bought my boat.  Five boats later, I’m still practicing, but I learned to sail in 45 Minutes.........