During my interview for an entry-level job at SAIL almost a decade ago, I was asked whether I liked to read. When I said yes, the editor-in-chief said, “Good. You’re going to do a lot of it here.”
One of the great marvels of that first year with the magazine was the books. The office was full of bookcases stuffed with decades’ worth of advanced reader copies for everything from glamorous coffee table tomes to niche little memoirs written before I was born. Pirates, naval architecture, cruising guides, it was all on offer. I was encouraged to take whatever I liked home with me for further study.
That year, a friend asked me how I was liking the new job, and I told them that for the past several years I’d been regularly trekking a few miles to my local used book shop to see if any more ratty and yellowing sailing books had appeared in their sports section. “Now,” I said, delighted, “new ones turn up on my desk without me even having to walk to the mailbox!”
Which isn’t to disparage my little used bookstore. They supplied a teenage aspiring sailor with a small but impactful collection. The jewel in my library was Derek Lundy’s Godforsaken Sea. It’s a fabulous ensemble cast chronicle of the 1995 Vendée Globe, full of tragedy, adventure, and heroics. It remains one of my favorite sailing books to this day, both because of the text on the page and the time in my life that it came to me.
Back in 2016 as a student interested in maritime journalism, I’d been given permission to attend a press conference for the inaugural NY-Vendée race. Even that was sort of an accident, or maybe a gift from the language barrier. It was in the lead up to the Vendée Globe, and to try to get an American audience excited about the fleet, they planned a race starting in New York City.
I emailed their comms team to ask where the best place to watch the racing would be because I wanted to write a blog post about it. They emailed back to confirm the location of the press conference and ask if I required a spot on one of the media boats. On the bus ride to New York, I finished Godforsaken Sea.
That morning, I showed up already starstruck and amazed to see the IMOCAs lined up in a basin in Battery Park. They were beautiful, like nothing I’d ever seen before. I was a Volvo Ocean Race fan, but I’d never seen a VO65 in person. I’d barely ever sailed a boat bigger than a 420. The IMOCAs were a whole new world to me.
After the press conference, an apologetic and somewhat harried French press officer told me they’d made an administrative error and there wasn’t a space for me on the press launch. I couldn’t even be disappointed. That same administrative chaos was what had gotten me to the press conference in the first place. Besides, I’d gotten to see IMOCAs and their skippers up close and in person. How many people ever got that much?
Half an hour later—while tidying up my notes from a bench near the conference room—I heard clicking heels hurrying over to me. It was the press officer. A reporter from a certain sailing website bailed on his VIP ticket for a pro-am sail aboard an IMOCA, would I like it?
And so, just a day after I’d finished reading about the daring exploits of the 1995 Vendée Globe, I found myself clinging to the stanchion of Jérémie Beyou’s Maître Coq while it screamed across New York Harbor. It was like falling through the looking glass, right into Derek Lundy’s world.
But you certainly don’t have to wind up on a grand prix boat to see yourself in the best of sailing literature. I think that’s the beauty of the genre. There’s something intrinsic about the call of the sea that resonates with all sailors. These books aren’t just the stories of their subjects, but of a world that is familiar and all around us.
As the year winds down, I’ve dedicated a few pages in the November/December issue to highlighting writers who’ve published books in 2026. It was a great joy to read all of the work submitted for consideration. Though we couldn’t review all of them in the print magazine, a longer list of 2026 sailing titles will be shared in our newsletter in the coming weeks.
I hope you’ll find yourself in their pages, as I have found myself in so many sailing books throughout the years.
— Lydia
Lydia can be reached by email at lydia.mullan@firecrown.com or @lydiaatsea on Instagram
