HANDBOOK OF TRAILER SAILING
1st Edition (Sorry, this edition is SOLD OUT! Please refer to the 2nd edition Handbook.)

First published by Dodd, Mead & Co. in 1984, this is the book readers call "The Bible of trailerable sailboating." Mainly because it covers everything about the subject novices want to know. Even How to Sail! But more importantly it tells how to find a boat for your needs, how to rig it, equip it and sail it. And lots more! It details many inexpensive vest pocket trailerable live-aboard cruisers and their best features in the 14 to 30-foot category. But mainly it focuses on the easily handled 16 to 19-foot Com-Pac sailboats, big/little boats you can actually live aboard for weeks of sail-boating fun. Burgess tells about customizing these boats for maximum comfort, then takes you to the Florida Keys for a detailed live-aboard sail-boating adventure where you dive up lobster dinners using your own homemade sea-sled. This 349-page 5.5 x 8.25-inch paperback Limited First Edition is available with author's autograph.

FROM THE PUBLISHER:

    This book is about trailerable sailboats. It tells how to select one to suit your needs, how to outfit it, how to trailer it, how to sail it, and how to have fun doing it.
    It also helps you handle any problems that might arise_. The author has tried to combine all of the basic information about this popular activity into one compact handbook for those who would enjoy sailing and cruising extensively aboard the size sailboat that can be easily towed behind the family car — even compacts — Robert Burgess has based his book on a lifetime of sailing adventures that began when his father let him make his first single-handed sailing voyage at the age of 6. That first homemade sailboat was his passport to adventure. He wrote this book as a passport to yours.

FROM THE AUTHOR:

"Have you ever considered how inexpensive it would be to trailer your own sailboat to the Florida keys (or anywhere else for that matter) to live aboard while enjoying your scuba diving or snorkeling? Talk about saving money! Of course in the Keys you have to get use to eating the lobsters you sail out and dive up each day, but then someone’s got to do it — why not you? My book tells you everything you need to know about how to do it — how to find the right sailboats, how to rig and sail them, how to pack your mini-cruiser for living aboard comfortably — even in small l6-footers!

Best of all, the book is loaded with all kinds of shortcuts, tips and information on how to do it easily, safely, and comfortably. (Even how to build an underwater sled for towing your buddy and catching that lobster supper!) Then cook the tails in your cockpit while sipping a cool one, watching an incredible sunset, and listening to great music on your built in Stereo. Believe me, guys, it doesn't get any better than that!"

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

FROM THE BOOK:

    "One of the reasons is the full bow design. If you look at the Com-Pac bow, or the bow of any good seaworthy boat, you will see that it is shaped like the pointed end of a football. If you lay a football on its side in a pool of water and heel it over, there is no change to its underwater shape. And this is what occurs to the bow of the Com-Pac, which is spoon shaped and, like a spoon when it is heeled over, the shape remains the same. This is not true, however, for the clipper bow that you have seen on clipper ships. This is a concave forward quarter section that looks beautiful as it enters the water, slicing its way through the waves. But somewhere there you have to pay the price. Somewhere you still have to push the mass of the boat through the water. Now you can start entering it very finely but you still have to get back to the mass. If you start off concave then you just get full a little farther back. Clipper ships were well known for their downwind performance, but you never saw them really beating to windward for when they were beating to windward they were laid over on their sides. When a clipper ship is laid over on its side, you’ve changed its attitude. You don’t have that football bow. You have a differently shaped bow. It is concave, and when a wave smashes into that concave bow the tendency is not only to slam the boat but to slow its forward momentum. This might not be as critical on a large sailing ship as it would be on a sixteen-foot sailboat that lacks the mass to push itself through the seas. So even though the clipper bow was a beautiful sight on the old sailing ships, it doesn’t work on every boat.
    When beating into the wind, the full bow of the Com-Pac design is such that as the boat heels, the waterline actually increases, and therefore the boat sails faster at that angle," Buck told me.

 REVIEW:

"Everything you ever wanted to know about buying, outfitting, sailing and cruising aboard your own small trailerable live-aboard sailboat will be found between the covers of this highly readable book. Burgess even details such exotic subjects as how to rig your cruiser so you can sail and steer her while sitting in her bow straddling her bowsprit! He also tells how to build an underwater sea-sled that will allow you to fly underwater in search of spiny lobsters....or treasure. If you tire of such seaman-like pursuits as fishing, kite-flying or the tossing of your Frisbee dinner-plates, the author suggests stashing aboard an underwater metal detector for treasure hunting those deserted shoals where shipwrecks often lay. This book is great! It's the bible of trailer-sailing made easy!"
— Armchair Adventure Review

© 2000, 2001 Robert F. Burgess.  All rights reserved.