This volume is a worthy companion to the Bekens 'A Hundred Years of Sail' and 'The America's Cup'. It is a magnifient portrait gallery of contemporary yachts photographed in some of the world's most prestigious venues over the past decade. Beken's photographs are portraits without equal and they owe much of their exceptional quality to the close relationship of a remarkable family dynasty to the sea and to the vessels that use it as both highway and playground. The Bekens intimately and learnedly know the mood and movement of boats and the sea and have the skill to combine them in a way which unfailingly pleases the eye. So much so that, to connoisseurs, a Bekens image is unmistakable. Even to those with only an amateur's delight in ships and yachting, a Beken image is the epitome of what marine photography should be. Selecting from the Beken archive demands a steely nerve so that hundreds of thousands of images can be whittled down to the 115 plates in this book which are of yachts photographed on the Solent, in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. The yachts are arranged in three categories: 'Spirit of Tradition' - old as the last century, unique, individually designed yachts of enduring elegance: 'Cruiser Racers' - dual-purpose yachts built for both speed and comfort: 'Grand-Prix Elite' - contemporary, custom-designed yachts built with the latest technology whose express purpose remains speed and success on the race course.