Sail Away! – Reviewed

/ Ben Starling

Book the Captain just finished snoozing on:  
Sail Away! *, by Paul and Sheryl Shard



How do you provision and collect inventory to prepare a yacht to cruise – and what’s the cruising life really like? 

Topics Covered

  • secrets of successful cruises
  • the cost of cruising
  • outfitting
  • provisioning
  • maintaining inventory
  • cooking at sea
  • personal comfort

Best Part
This book is not set up as an inflexible ‘to do’ list, but rather as an ‘adapt it to you’ list. The Shard’s realise (for ex.) that everyone eats differently and simply using someone else’s shopping list is unlikely to leave you happy. 

So they describe in very useful detail how they tracked their own preferences ashore, and how they created systems to adapt those preferences to life on a boat. 

Then they teach methods to create your own systems that are geared to suit you best. 

Makes sense. We like it!

Wishes
While reading this, we wished we could have copies of the Shard’s lists anyways as a good point to start from. Then we would adapt those lists for ourselves.

And lo! They made that possible. There’s info in the Appendix on how to order disks with their lists on it/them… 

…but booo! They meant floppy disks. 

It seems this book has not been updated since 1998. A quick check at the publisher’s website does not list this book. So it doesn’t look like you can still buy these disks, floppy or otherwise.

The book itself, however, is still available on Amazon, and it’s info is timeless.

Conclusion
This was the first cruising ‘text’ the Can Opener ever bought. It’s still one of his favourites.

Ever read Sail Away! by Paul and Sheryl Shard? How did you find it? Any good recommendations for other books for the sea library?




–Captain Cat

(transcribed by the Can Opener)

* (not to be confused with Sail Away – no exclamation point – by Nicole Rodriguez…)


Book Reviews

Next: Celestial Navigation For Yachtsmen
Previously: Sell Up & Sail – Reviewed 

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