''Date, time, wind, waves, pressure, temperature, and cloud cover. Like pilots, roofers and mountain climbers, mariners are obsessed with the weather, immersed in it as part of their daily calculus . . . Make good decisions, mariners are fond of saying. If there were a corollary to this, it might offer: When the weather gods show you their cards, don''t miss them''

Weather can be the difference between life and death for a sailor, something Captain Elliot Rappaport knows very well, having spent almost his whole adult life at sea.

A professional ship''s captain, with over thirty years of experience sailing traditional vessels, ''tall ships'', Captain Rappaport has travelled around 100,000 sea miles, in all four hemispheres, and spent a great many hours watching the weather unfold.

In Reading the Glass he shares all he has learned about the weather at sea, gives us an inside look at the world of seafaring, a vocation much more than a job, and shares some hard-won mariner''s wisdom: if you are headed for Greenland in July, expect at least one storm, and wait until after Christmas to sail to New Zealand''s South Island; pack $3000-worth of fruit and veg for a two-month journey at sea; and the most valuable member of the crew is first of all the engineer, and secondly the cook!

Reading the Glass is a gorgeous blend of drily funny stories of life on a ship, the history of seafaring, stories of explorers, discoveries, epic storms, and the science of weather.

''An extraordinary book by a modern-day Melville . . . I can''t recommend this book highly enough'' Mark Vanhoenacker