There are hundreds of classic sailing and yachting books out-of-print and in the public domain that are free to download in PDF and other forms.  There are also more specialized ones for tall ships sailors (me!), sailing terms and vocabulary, poetry, lyrics.  You can take an hour some lazy afternoon and fill a hard drive with stuff to have handy for reading, including heavy weather and other technical texts.

I use books.google.com because I like the PDF file and find Gutenberg books a little less user-friendly but there are other sources as well.  If you use Google, the search will show in-print, for-sale books as well.  The tip-off for the free ones is usually the copyright date or absence of a grahic/icon showing a modern book cover.

When I was taking celestial navigation, I found some classic old texts that illustrated the geometry better than the modern text I was using.

Catherine

L26.18.5N, Lo080.04W

Hey folks - - this is a really good tip - - I went to www.books.google.com and Catherine is right, there are a lot of reference books and even fiction that you can download for free. I never even knew this existed and I guess they sure don't advertise it. Thanks for the tip.

Tom