cover image Wind Star: The Building of a Sailship

Wind Star: The Building of a Sailship

Joseph Novitski. MacMillan Publishing Company, $0 (242pp) ISBN 978-0-02-590830-7

For those who love the sea, ex-New York Times writer Novitski here details the origins and realization of the first commercial sailing ship built in 75 years. The opening chaptersabout Finland's Aland Islands and shipbuilder-entrepreneur Karl Andren, and about the last days of the great sailshipswill be of interest to general readers, but when Novitski moves on to detail the Wind Star's constructionits hull, masts and sailsonly the initiated will stay on course. The interplay of personalities is well limned, however, particularly between the Norwegian sailors, instinctive and romantic seamen, and the French technical experts, Cartesian rationalists all, and between the engineers and the interior designers, a clash of technology and art. Wind Star, launched in 1986, sails out of Miami. (January 18)