The Capable Cruiser

A Dolphin Book Club "Main Selection, " The Capable Cruiser illustrates how successful cruising is the result of a combination of factors including a homogeneous crew, proper preparation, solid gear, regular maintenance and exemplary seamanship. This book is the sequel to The Self Sufficient Sailor. This is indeed the global bible of cruising sailors.

Lin and Larry Pardey have voyaged together for over 26 years, covering the equivalent of 5 circumnavigations on board their own self-built cutters, Seraffyn and Taleisin. Larry worked as first mate on a 140-ton, 85-foot schooner, Double Eagle, voyaging from Newport Beach, California, to Hawaii and back and along the Mexican coast before meeting Lin. He, along with Leslie Dyball, won the handicap prize for first overall in the exceptionally stormy 1974 Round Britain two-handed race. Lin and Larry have delivered two dozen boats across oceans and raced their own and others boats. Their interest in storm tactics has led them to research both older and modern methods of heaving-to, by talking and corresponding with sailors from dozens of countries, by working with Victor Shane at the Drag Device Data Base, and by testing both on their own boat in hurricane-force winds and on modern boats off the Cape of Storms, in South Africa.

Larry was selected as the winner of the International Oceanic Award, givenby the Royal Institute of Navigation under the sponsorship of the Little Ship Club of London and presented by Her Royal Highness, the Princess Royal, Princess Anne, for the most meritorious voyage of over 2,000 miles using traditional methods of navigation. Larrys award was for 30 years of successful voyaging, covering more than 150,000 miles on 21 different vessels and using onlysextant and chronometer, including his 2,840 mile voyage in 1995 from Fernancdo do Noronha to Horta, in the Azores.

In March 1996, Lin was presented with the Ocean Cruising Club Award for the person who has done the most to foster and encourage ocean cruising in small craft and the practice of seamanship and navigation in all branches, at the Royal Thames Yacht Club, in London.

Articles by Lin and Larry have appeared in Sail Magazine, Cruising World, Woodenboat (USA) Practical Boat Owner, Yachting Monthly, Classic Boat Magazine (UK), Cruising Helmsman (Australia), South African Yachting, and Nautica (Brazil).

Their nine books have been published in both the United States and England; two have been translated into German and Japanese. Lin and Larry are currently writing a new book, The Cost Conscious Cruiser. Their most recent voyage took them to Scotland and Norway, and Taleisin is ready for another voyage, either west or north in the spring of 1998.