Monday, February 25, 2013

Book Review: Sailing - philosophy for everyone

As you might have gathered from recent posts I found this book really interesting.

It wasn't a quick read; more one to take small bites, chew carefully and digest slowly before continuing. I didn't by any means agree with anything: one of the last chapters on "The necessity of sailing" seemed to imply that it was sailing that caused both philosophy and religion which led to me writing "No!" and "No!" in the margin.

There were many angles to this book. On the one hand it was using the sailing experience to illustrate the main schools of philosophic thought, while on the other addressing the sailing experience itself.

But what is meant by the sailing experience? That led to various attempts at classication, and of the various types of sailor.

There were many a personal experience as to what sailing meant to the authors, from offshore racing, to sailing the replica HMS Bounty, to wind surfers, to Etchells regattas, to the Chicago to Mackinac Island race.

At the end it didn't change my philosophy but rather enrich the ideas around it, and I expect it would do the same for you.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds interesting, will have to give it a read soon!

First Class Sailing

JP said...

I can certainly recommend it - really interesting