GET A GOOD START AND SAIL ON THE LIFTED TACK. What's better than a novel set in the Age of Sail? The reality. Let me recommend Flying Cloud (details or compare prices.) Great page-turner, even with an annoying cold making me tired. Flying Cloud set a speed record, New York to San Francisco around the Horn in less than 90 days, in 1851. The hook for the story is the partnership between Captain Josiah Perkins Creesy and his wife Eleanor Creesy, the navigator. (Something tells me I would probably learn a few things racing Lasers or M Scows against her.) The story also provides some insights into why Olympic and Titanic went to sail with only perfunctory sea trials. Flying Cloud's sea trial was her delivery passage from Boston via the Outer Route (east of Cape Cod and Long Island) and on her record-breaking passage her main and mizzen topgallant pole masts carried away in one blow, and her fore topgallant pole mast carried away in another. The crew was able to take the pieces on deck, effect repairs, continue the trip, and replace the spars without loss of any hands. The story also provides some insight into why the clipper ships carried a lot of extra sails for running, rather than using the light-air racing tactic of sailing wider angles to get your apparent wind forward. The act of gybing a ship requires all hands, and to carry out such maneuvers frequently might leave the skipper with a severely tired crew in the case of an emergency.

The reader will also learn a few of the work songs used to get the crew heaving in unison, there's no hand-over-hand or a Harken winch to singlehandedly hoist or trim a sail here. This site is a comprehensive collection of chanteys, and you'll find some of the more popular ones, with program notes, here.