Advanced Racing Tactics

by Stuart H. Walker

"Possibly the best book on racing tactics ever written." ―Ted Jones, Dolphin Book Club News 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.

400 pages, Paperback

First published June 17, 1986

Reviews

[Syl Sabastian · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a boy, I was deeply into sailing, racing specifically. I consumed every available book on sailing available to me at the time, especially racing, I could find. Of all of them, one stood out, this one. (The original edition) I found it near the end of the time I was sailing, and it included everything the other books lacked. I was by then an accomplished enough sailor to be able to fully appreciate the book's expertise. An amazing manual of excellence then, and should still be. What made it especially excellent were the levels of discernment and sophistication involved and how their communication. It's always a joy to hear a true expert on a subject. Of the thousands and thousands of books I read as a youth, few stand out as memorable, this is one of them.

[James Morrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ted Jones thought that perhaps this was was the best book ever written on racing tactics. I have the previous three books on sailboat racing by Stuart Walker, and although all different, they are all good to excellent in my expert opinion. It is "advanced" in that the author assumes you have the basics of boat handling under your belt. Walker takes a great deal of time to explain each element of preparation, psych, equipment, starting, beating, reaching, running, finishing as done by winners. The diagrams are instructive and the sketches by Thomas Price are just wonderful. If you are racing sailboats or considering racing sailboats I think you will enjoy reading and having this book. If you think by any chance you might want to sail up with the leaders in sailboat racing then this book is a must. The psychology, he believes, is that you must be confident and keep racing and learning to get in the winner's circle. Each time you race you should figure out what you did right and wrong and Stuart's book will help you with that. There are so many factors in sailboat racing I don't think a life time is long enough to learn them all well, but Stuart has made a fine attempt at it and shows how psychology is key at the highest levels of competition.