Sort of a Flotilla Holiday: The ins and outs of organising a cruise in company round the UK, Alison and Julian Cable

In 2023, the OGA, the association for gaff rigged sailing, reached its 60th Anniversary. The celebrations included a Round Britain Cruise, with boats taking part that ranged from a 19ft Cornish Shrimper, several centenarian yachts, and a one hundred-year-old motor lifeboat. A similar event 10 years earlier had shown how important a common understanding of the timetable would be.

The OGA is an area-based organisation, and each Area was expected to host one (or more) social and/or racing events for the fleet and local boats. For the Areas, knowing who would be coming was vital. Making sure the port and canal authorities were aware was also important and knowing what the Association and the Areas were responsible for and what was just the normal responsibility of a yachting skipper needed communicating to all parties.

We’ll share the experience from the perspectives of the overall co-ordinator (Alison), and the president of the largest Area, with two party ports and two canals (Julian). We also joined the cruise for a week on Robinetta so we saw a little of what the crews saw too. We’ll talk about the tools we used, some of the problems and the pleasures and even have a few nice pictures of boats and scenery.

Please note: lectures can be watched live online but we do not generally make recordings available after the event, for a number of reasons relating to time and copyright issues.