Hooyasailor who sails out of Atlanta and Pensicola asks an interesting question about sailing books, which I'll answer but first I want to comment about the problem I have with most books on sail trim and that includes some of the best I've have read, which includes Dennis Conners "Sail Like A Champion" plus ones by Gary Jobson, Steve Colgate and on and on. The following is from a beginners prospective. The first thing you encounter is you have no idea what you are even looking for. The first thing you have to know about sail trim is what is it you are adjusting. There are four items and I call them the "The 4 Elements of Sail Trim". They are Draft depth, draft position, twist and angle of attack. Assume you knew what you were looking for and decided to look up twist. You would find that subject in Dennis's book on page 96-99,104,105,110 and 119. The next thing you need to know is what are the sail trim controls for the main and jib and what do they do. Suppose you were interested in learning about the outhaul. You'd find that on 120-121,124,201 and 229. This goes on and on with every book you review. When I decided to write my book "The Sail Trim Users Guide", I felt there had to be an easier way to present sail trim. What I did to take all the infomation you needed to know about twist or angle of attack and condense each subject into one section and I followed that through for all the sail trim controls for the main and jib. Some sections are pretty long, such as telltales, which is 6 pages because there is a lot to cover. Believe it or not but I condensed everything a begginer to intermediate sailors needs to know about sail trim into about 70 pages!! I researched sail trim material from about 25 books, 100 sail trim articles and 6 videos. After I put it all together I tested every concept on my Catalina30 to be sure it all worked. Some things didn't so I changed it to what did work for me. The thing about this is anyone can do what I did but you have to ask yourself, do I have the time for something like that? Believe me you don't. The second question you have to ask is why would I want to do all that work in the first place as this guy has already done it for me anyway!! All you'd have to do is take the principles I've outlined in my book and Sail Trim Chart and go out on your boat and apply them. Sail trim is not rocket science. In a couple of hours, you'd be a better sailor than you ever thought possable. After you have mastered the simple basics, your ready to move on to the next level. Now to answer hooyasailors questions - check out the books and videos by Bill Gladstone "Performance Racing Tactics" and "Performance Sail Trim". They are some of the best I've seen. His seminars are great also.