Sailing

Gavin Sutherland of the Sutherland Brothers wrote Sailing in 1972, and the duo recorded it that June. Their single reached 54. Stewart cut it for Atlantic Crossing at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in 1975 with Tom Dowd producing, with Pete Carr on acoustic and electric guitars. He remembered Dowd phoning his hotel at ten in the morning to say the track was mixed and needed a vocal, and said he got it in six or seven takes. He also said he argued vehemently against making it the lead single and wanted Three Time Loser instead.

The UK single came out in August 1975 and spent four weeks at number one in September. In the United States it reached 58 on the Hot 100. It returned to the UK chart in 1976 as the theme of the BBC documentary series Sailor, about HMS Ark Royal, and reached three that October. It is Stewart's biggest-selling single in the UK, with 1.12 million sales reported in November 2012.

Live

It entered his concert set on the European tour that began at the Trondheim Spektrum in Norway on 1 November 1976, usually as the closing number before Stay with Me as an encore. He sang it on Top of the Pops on 23 September 1976, at the Prince's Trust All-Star Rock Concert at Wembley Stadium on 20 June 1986 with Elton John on piano and Eric Clapton on guitar, and at the Concert for Diana on 1 July 2007. Joan Baez covered it in 1977, Robin Trower in 1976 and Roger Whittaker in 1978.