Cruising & Racing
Members voyages
In August this year, father and son Matt and Matthew Findlay took part in the Rolex Fastnet race in their Maxi 1100 Superted. The race was the culmination of a great deal of preparation which involved completing RORC offshore qualification races, meeting the strict offshore special safety regulations, as well as preparing the boat and crew for five days of non stop racing.
Round Britain with Moonshine
Read John Hooper’s account of his voyage in his Maxi 1100, summer 2006
Five years ago I was fortunate to be invited to crew on a friend’s yacht from Peterhead to Oban through the Caledonian Canal. This was a memorable and enjoyable experience which gave me my first taste of sailing in Scotland and which I was determined to build on.
Having done the Canal, as crew, I was keen to see if I could go right round the top, as skipper, and started to make my plans with that in mind. The pilot books do their best to make the Pentland Firth and Cape Wrath seem as frightening as possible but it became clear that the Summer months provide reasonable periods of calm enough weather if one is lucky. The key lies in getting the tides right and, for the Pentland Firth in particular, it’s best by far to tackle it at neaps, as Spring tides can run in excess of 8 knots. Provided there’s an absence of fog and winds are less than F4 there shouldn’t be too much of a problem…We set off from Harwich on June 5th, which allowed us 12 days to get to Wick, the jumping-off point for the Firth, neap tides starting on 17th. If the weather turned foul before we got there, we’d go through the Canal, making our decision at Peterhead. In the event, when we got to Peterhead, conditions looked pretty stable and we had a good passage across the Moray Firth, arriving at Wick in late afternoon on the 14th. In fact, winds were so light that we had to motor most of the way. Continue reading
THE PLANNING
and we were almost ready to go. Although we’d signed up for the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) we still harboured the thought that in due course we might prefer to head towards the Mediterranean. Then our son Mike phoned to tell us that he’d just booked flights to St. Lucia for himself and partner Hannah and they would see us there at Christmas!