For 50 years Heavy Weather Sailing has been regarded as the ultimate international authority on surviving storms at sea aboard sailing and motor vessels. The first edition was compiled by Kaines Adlard Coles himself in 1967. Since then technology may have improved, but the weather certainly hasn't. This is the seventh updated edition, edited by racing yachtsman Peter Bruce, ensuring that in its 50th year the book remains as relevant and as essential as it has been for the previous five decades.

The book brings together a wealth of expert advice from many of the great sailors of the present, including fresh accounts of yachts overtaken by extreme weather, from Ewan Southby-Tailyour, Alex Whitworth and Dag Pike to Larry and Lin Pardey, Matt Sheahan and Andrew Claughton. It also includes a new Foreword by Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, Britain's most high profile yachtsman of the past 50 years.

The expert advice section has been updated in line with current thinking, and there has been a major update to the chapter focusing on the use of storm sails as well as to the use of drag devices. The technique of taking refuge has been reviewed and updated, and the chapters dealing with preparations for heavy weather and its effect on yacht design have been overhauled. These revisions ensure that Heavy Weather Sailing is as relevant, useful and instructive for today's sailor venturing offshore as it ever was – perhaps more so in the light of tragic disasters like the loss of the Cheeky Raffiki mid-Atlantic on a delivery trip after her season racing in the Caribbean.

This is the definitive book for crews of any size contemplating voyages out of sight of land anywhere in the world, whether racing or cruising. It gives a clear message regarding the preparations required, and the tactics to consider when it comes on to blow.