A sailor is never really finished like a piece of toast or a steak. A sailor is always in the living process of becoming, a condition described by Plato as life itself. There is too much information, too much experience and too many variables for any sailor to absorbe in one lifetime. You are a sailor when you say you are a sailor, not when you know this much or that much. The core of this book is to give you enough information, but just enough, to support a claim to sailordom and to convince you that, with the minimums set up herein, you are capable of taking a small boat across a large ocean.

Edition: 1996