seasick novelist has some questions

[Jolly Roger]

I appologize if this solution has been suggested already.
I came in late on this one and have not read all the replies.
If the book is written it seems to me the easiest way to get it nautically correct would be to pay a couple of experienced sailors to edit it.

[hellosailor]

Except, editors can't help a story line that has been botched with a huge faux pas up front. Consider, if Herman Melville had written Moby Dick for a crew of three, setting out to go whaling in a, ah, whaleboat. OK, so the editors change that to a whaling ship...and there's still only three characters on board.

Yeah, there's a limit to what editors can do versus what you need a full co-author for.

And even with a co-author, well, the classic screw-up on that is James Patterson's "Sail". Apparently neither he nor his uncreditted co-author ever stepped onto a sailboat. ROFLMAO, closed book and dropped it back at the library fast.

Audiences these days are easily insulted.

[Jolly Roger]

I did say, “experienced sailors”, and by edit I meant just the sailing terminology. But then, who cares anyway? Many a sailing story has been successful, yet make any self respecting yachtsman cringe. I used to buy the Alexander Kent saga about Bolitho and wondered many times how he managed to sight a Frenchie on the horizon, and within half an hour they were preparing to grapple. But they were otherwise a really good yarn, so I just overlooked the errors.

[Jammer Six]

Why don't you beg, borrow, charter or otherwise get yourself aboard a boat, and go sailing?