Seamanship Quotes

Sailing a boat calls for quick action, a blending of feeling with the wind and water as well as with the very heart and soul of the boat itself. Sailing teaches alertness and courage, and gives in return a joyousness and peace that but few sports afford.

These Egyptians, Cyprians, Cilicians, and Pamphylians, who are counted in the number of your subject-allies, of how little service are they to you!

A pilot's business is with the wind, and with the stars, with night, with sand, with the sea. He strives to outwit the forces of nature. He stares with expectancy for the coming of the dawn the way a gardener awaits the coming of spring. He looks forward to port as a promised land, and truth for him is what lives in the stars.

They have a fine breeze and are now we hope, well on their way.

He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.

The establishment of a naval academy, furnishing the means of theoretic instruction to the youths who devote their lives to the service of their country upon the ocean, still solicits the sanction of the Legislature. Practical seamanship and the art of navigation may be acquired on the cruises of the squadrons which from time to time are dispatched to distant seas, but a competent knowledge even of the art of ship building, the higher mathematics, and astronomy; the literature which can place our officers on a level of polished education with the officers of other maritime nations; the knowledge of the laws, municipal and national, which in their intercourse with foreign states and their governments are continually called into operation, and, above all, that acquaintance with the principles of honor and justice, with the higher obligations of morals and of general laws, human and divine, which constitutes the great distinction between the warrior-patriot and the licensed robber and pirate -- these can be systematically taught and eminently acquired only in a permanent school, stationed upon the shore and provided with the teachers, the instruments, and the books conversant with and adapted to the communication of the principles of these respective sciences to the youthful and inquiring mind

Sailing is in the same vein as horse riding. There's a beauty to it; it's an elegant sport. You have to employ your intelligence. It's technical, but you also have to take into account the natural elements - the wind, the water, the weather.

I'd love to have a proper sailing boat and go around the world.

I love boats. I can be on a boat for days.

I've always wanted to sail around the world in a handmade boat. And I built a boat. I had a boat built for me, I mean, and my second day out to sea I realized that (a) I'm not a sailor, and (b) I have no knowledge of basic navigation.

The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

The best that science can devise and that naval organization can provide must be regarded only as an aid, and never as a substitute for good seamanship.

Hoist up sail while gale doth last, Tide and wind stay no man's pleasure.

It is not the ship so much as the skillful sailing that assures the prosperous voyage.

A great mind is a good sailor, as a great heart is.

We were suddenly faced with the necessity of training a lot of young men in the art of navigation.

I've always been a very careful sailor. I know, me and being careful - doesn't really sound right, does it? But when I sail, I take it seriously and take along spares for everything. You have to be careful when you're 1,500 miles from land. There's no one you can call. You're on your own.

My father was a sailor and our summer vacations were always on a sailboat. I had a little boat before I had a moped.

Dad was a passionate sailor, and he taught me.

'Tis skill, not strength, that governs a ship.

The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head--no intricate game of chess where few moves are made in straight-forwardness and ends are attained by indirection, an oblique, tedious, barren game hardly worth that poor candle burnt out in playing it.

I do not know whether I have been a good seaman, but I know I have been a very faithful one.

The world is in dreadful need of men who will assume the new leadership - who will have the courage of their own visions and who will recognise clearly that we are only at the beginning of the voyage, and have to learn an entirely new system of seamanship.

There is so much to sailing a ship. There's about a thousand different lines on a brig ship, and knowing what each one of those does, it takes a long time, and that's why you have these cabin boys that start on the ship, and they learn throughout the years, and that's why it takes so long to captain one.