Showing titles in Water Sports

A must-have book for walkers, sailors and everyone interested in the natural world, How to Read Water unlocks the secrets of water in all its forms. Natural navigator Tristan Gooley imparts knowledge and teaches skills, tips and useful observations to help you navigate the landscape around you.

Fed up with teenage life in the suburbs, Jaimal Yogis ran off to Hawaii with little more than a copy of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha and enough cash for a surfboard. His journey is a coming-of-age saga that takes him from communes to monasteries, from the warm Pacific to the icy New York shore. Equal parts spiritual memoir and surfer's tale, this is a chronicle of finding meditative focus in the barrel of a wave and eternal truth in the great, salty blue.

It may have been because she could run. It may have been because she wanted to swim, or perhaps because she only ever did 10 minutes of breaststroke at a time. But, as she learned one day while flailing around in the sea, she really couldn't. Believing that a life lived fully isn't one with the most money earned, the most stuff bought or the most races won but one with the most experiences experienced the most fully, she decided to conquer her fear of the water.

A "normal" Caribbean hurricane travels from east to west, but Lenny was anything but normal. Spawned south of Cuba in 1999, this late-season storm defied all predictions by moving steadily east toward the Leeward Islands. Eventually building almost to Category 5 strength, Lenny squatted for two days between the Virgin Islands and St. Martin, whipping the ocean with 155 mile-per-hour winds and sixty-foot seas.

A compulsive and unforgettable study of intensity, These Heavy Black Bones meditates on Blackness, identity, and the ecstasy of peak physical performance. In stunning prose, Rebecca charts her career's ascent, her singular love of the water, and lays bare the pressures within her swimming world.

All alone for 193 days in his purpose-built yacht, New Zealand yachtsman Graeme Kendall crossed 28,000 miles of ocean, facing some of the Earth's most challenging seas. An enthralling adventure, To The Ice and Beyond will inspire you to live your dreams and to never give up. During his extraordinary solo circumnavigation, Kendall became the first person to sail the Northwest Passage solo nonstop. Sailing east to west, he knocked off the "Everest of sailing" in just 12 days - the fastest recorded. This is a story of determination, meticulous planning, and rugged courage.

Yusra Mardini fled her native Syria to the Turkish coast in 2015 and boarded a dinghy full of refugees bound for Greece. When the small and overcrowded boat's engine cut out, it began to sink. Yusra, her sister and two others took to the water, pushing the boat for three and a half hours in open water until they eventually landed on Lesbos, saving the lives of the passengers aboard.

In 2006, Dee Caffari became the first woman to sail solo round the world against the prevailing winds and currents. Her story is an adventure in the true sense of the word. It is about physical hardship in terrible conditions, overcoming solitude, sleep deprivation, the worry of crucial equipment failing, 34 days of gales, 12 metre waves, cyclones and a lightning strike. It is also about a woman who stepped outside her safe zone, gave up a good job and financial security, all because she wanted to sail.

By age twenty, at the height of the Jazz Age, Trudy Ederle was the most accomplished swimmer in the world. She’d won Olympic gold and set a host of world records. But the greatest challenge remained: the English Channel. Only a few swimmers, none of them women, had ever made the treacherous twenty-one mile crossing. Trudy’s failed first attempt seemed to confirm what many naysayers believed: No woman could possibly accomplish such a thing. In 1926, Ederle proved them wrong.

The International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGS) are vital for maritime safety. You must be able to identify vessels during the day by their special shapes and at night time by their lights, and understand how they are likely to alter course or speed in a potential collision situation. Melanie Bartlett's audiobook provides a clear and authoritative explanation of each regulation. It will help any seafarer understand their responsibilities, meaning that everybody at sea will be safer.

In June 1994, Alvah Simon and his wife, Diana, set off in their 36-foot sailboat to explore the hauntingly beautiful world of icebergs, tundra, and fjords lying high above the Arctic Circle. Four months later, unexpected events would trap Simon alone on his boat, frozen in ice 100 miles from the nearest settlement, with the long polar night stretching into darkness for months to come.

Rick's recent appearance on Ben Fogle's New Lives in the Wild chronicled his budget lifestyle and adventures aboard Calypso, and introduced the idea of budget sailing to a whole new audience - an audience who may have never considered the possibility that such a dream could be made a reality, on such a small amount of money. This book is for them and for any experienced sailors who want to cast off the yoke of consumerist yachting and get back to what really matters at sea.

Across Islands and Oceans is the memoir of 25 year-old James Baldwin and his epic two-year, solo circumnavigation in Atom, his trusty but aging 28-foot sailboat.

Freya is still searching. For four years, she's been looking for a way to fill the empty space her brother's death left behind. Ready for another distraction, Freya decides to swim every tidal pool in Britain in a year with her friend Miri. The adventure takes them from a pool hidden in the cliffs of fishing-village Polperro to the quarry lagoon of Abereiddi via Trinkie Wick where locals meet each year to give the pool wall a fresh lick of paint.

The sea has always been a part of Nuala Moore’s life – her earliest memory is of jumping off her father’s trawler in Dingle harbour and swimming back to shore. She’s swam in some of the most dangerous and remote waters in the world. But her burgeoning career stalled when she became the sole carer of her ailing father; she couldn’t commit to training, and she struggled with a lack of direction. That’s when she found ice swimming – swims that take up less time, but which are far more demanding, physically and mentally. Nuala’s philosophy is that we are all capable of greatness.

For centuries, mariners have spun tales of gargantuan waves, 100-feet high or taller. Until recently scientists dis​missed these stories - waves that high would seem to violate the laws of physics. But in the past few decades, as a startling number of ships vanished and new evidence has emerged, oceanographers realized something scary was brewing in the planet’s waters. They found their proof in February 2000, when a British research vessel was trapped in a vortex of impossibly mammoth waves in the North Sea - including several that approached 100 feet.

From the author of the best-selling RYA Navigation Handbook, this audiobook is based on the RYA’s official title to support the RYA VHF Operator's Short Range Certificate examination. It expands upon the quick reference VHF Radio inc GMDSS book (G22) to assist with a deeper level of understanding which will help you pass the exam.

The world-famous Fastnet Race takes yachts from the Isle of Wight to the Fastnet Rock off the southwest coast of Ireland and back. The 1979 race began in perfect conditions, but was soon engulfed by the deadliest storm in the history of modern sailing. By the time it passed, the havoc caused was immeasurable, and fifteen sailors had lost their lives.

Steve Haywood has been cruising the inland waterways for 50 years, and has amassed a following of readers and listeners keen to hear about his travelling tales on Britain’s beautiful canals and rivers. Tales from the Tillerman is both his tribute to Britain’s canals, rivers and countryside and a celebration of Britishness in all its eccentric glory. Unlike Steve’s previous titles, Tales from the Tillerman is casting the net wider and drawing from his full 50 years of experience, recounting the many hair-raising escapades he’s had up and down the country.

In July 1973, Bob Tininenko, his wife Linda, and his brother in-law Jim Fisher set sail from Tacoma, Washington, on a 31-foot trimaran, down the West Coast to Costa Rica. The journey was expected to take a matter of weeks, but 10 days into the cruise, the party encountered a freak storm off the coast of Northern California. When gale-force winds and 50-foot waves capsized their boat, the voyage became a nightmare. For 72 days, the trio was lost at sea. Challenged by nature and compromised by a bitter rivalry, their courage and will to live was put to the ultimate test.