There is a huge amount of research and study still needed into yachting history, which should be rewarding, because, as I hope I have shown, yachting holds up a mirror to its society and has been an important part of this nation's social history for centuries.

I am all too aware of the many unanswered questions in this text, unanswered because the data was not there. There is an additional urgency for two reasons. Many of the original shipwrights who built wooden yachts, and many of the sailors who cruised and raced in them, are now getting on in years. A second, more recent, overlapping watershed concerns those who sailed by compass, log and sextant, before the advent of Global Positioning Systems, that started coming into civilian use in the late eighties. There is so much yachting history that urgently requires recording and researching.

In a book of this length, covering such a long period of time and so many types of sailing, there are bound to be factual errors, misunderstandings and misinterpretations. If you spot one, please contact the publisher who will pass your comments on to me. Thank you.

Mike Bender