The Gentleman S Guide To Passages South

This is the Tenth and last Edition of the popular directions for sailing south to the Bahamas and the Caribbean. For more than twenty years Van Sant repeatedly surveyed nearly 200 anchorages between Florida and South America. He racked up well over 80,000 sea miles doing it, mostly single-handed. Why? You'll find some interesting answers in his book of stories, Margarita Cat, but es-sentially, he did it because he liked doing it. Sailing up and down the chain of islands so much and so often, he got to looking for shorter and easier ways to navigate between each link in the chain, and he kept refining detailed nav plans for every leg. He has systematically taken the thorns out of the route they used to call the Thorny Path. For example, he exploits the calming effects on wind and sea which result from land cooling on each side of an inter-island passage. Applying his many methods, both sail and power can make safe, comfortable and pleasant progress even against normally impenetrable trade winds and seas. Passages South offers an illustrated manual of instruction for specific passages and harbors down islands as well as a cruising guide for the Greater Antilles islands of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. It has sailed aboard tens of thousands of boats passaging between the Americas. It should sail with you too.

Frank Virgintino, author of numerous Free Cruising Guides for the Caribbean, has been working on "A Thinking Man's Guide to Voyaging South" for almost a year. Roughly 200 pages long, the Guide addresses everything North American sailors need to know to get to the Caribbean safely through a discussion of various routes from North America to the Caribbean as well as a discussion of the entire Caribbean - which the author breaks down into four quadrants. The author hopes that the Guide will allow for a clearer understanding of the entire Caribbean as well as the various routes that can be employed. Not only does it cover routes to the Caribbean from N. America and cruising routes around the Caribbean, it also looks at all aspects of preparation, weather and Gulf Stream information, safety and security and local knowledge and advice imparted by someone who has cruised the Caribbean extensively for many years.

"...Suggests what preventive measures sailors can take and advises how they should deal with stress, aggression, and fear when faced with a confrontation". - Back cover.