Stuart H. Walker M.D. – författare

A guide for racing covers the principles of sail trim, crew movement techniques, maneuvers, and control systems, and gives advice on adjusting to special conditions.

These racing factors, Dr. Walker explains, translate into boat speed, psychology, and tactics.Wind strength and wave formation, in turn, determine sail rig and fin trim, as well as the psychological approach needed to win. He demonstrates for both the new racer and the seasoned expert precisely how to collect and understand these elements, how to use them in the formulation of strategy, and, finally, how to formulate moment-by-moment tactics. This is a masterful guide to winning.

Addressing the competitor—whether in sailing, tennis, golf, baseball, or other sport—Stuart H. Walker demonstrates that what competition means to the competitor is the main determinant of success and failure, and that what it means to you can be turned to your advantage. Dr. Walker writes, “Competence leads to courage, creativity, and fun. Lack of understanding and lack of control lead to fear, depressions, and incompetence—and no fun. Competition is too good to waste.” For the paperback edition, Dr. Walker has written a new chapter, “Cheating,” in which he discusses why cheating seems to be on the increase, what it signifies, and what should be done about it.

Today far more sailors than ever before have reached a superior level of competitive ability, and the few individuals who remain at the head of the competitive classes year and after year must constantly improve their skills. This book will help the sailor analyze for himself the determinants of tactical success.One of the foremost theoreticians of the art of yacht racing, Stuart H. Walker is also an outstanding practicing racer. For eight years Dr. Walker kept a complete record of the factors that determined the outcome of every race in which he competed. The recommendations he offers in Advanced Racing Tactics are based upon the analysis of these races—the mistakes and the successes. He sets forth basic principles of starting, beating, reaching, and mark rounding that should be practiced every time, and he underlines what mattered, what consistently provided an advantage.The advanced racing skipper, Dr. Walker writes, must look around, examine his own mistakes and successes, record them, review them, remember them. When he recognizes from this own experience the validity of the principles presented here, they will become useful to him. When he has incorporated them into his regular racing patterns, he will have made a five- or ten-year leap forward.

The author of "A Manual of Sail Trim" has designed a guide for the competitive racing dinghy sailor that explains the art of maneuvering. The object of the text is to provide instructions on keeping a dinghy in relation to its competitors so that it finishes the race in the lead.

A world authority and champion sailor has written the definitive book on one of the most important, and least understood, factors in winning: the wind, its changes, and its effects on racing strategy.Races are lost by a failure to understand and predict changes in wind. This book is the first and only one of its kind to deal with the character of the wind as it applies specifically to the racer. It shows how surface wind is affected by season, time of day, temperature disparities, clouds and geography. It supplies the meteorology needed to understand surface winds, and it shows how to predict the many kinds of wind shifts. Above all it shows how to take advantage of this special knowledge.The book includes a wide range of illustrations in a section called "Winds of the World," showing how the wind behaves in many of the world's major racing areas. There are numerous examples of application of wind prediction to the planning of a race. The author includes a cross index which makes readily available all the factors needed to make wind predictions: the effects of season, time of day, origin of the wind, the weather system extant, cloud cover, wind velocity, origins of shifts, etc.This book is essential equipment for every racing sailor, whether competing in small boats or in the cruising classes.