What will cruising look like in the next decade or so? Practical Boat Owner editor, Katy Stickland, has spoken to experts and looked at trends to find out how pathways into sailing and boating have changed, looking at models of boat ownership and how this will impact the type of cruising people will be doing, as well as what boats and gear might look like by 2050.
The talk will be followed by the award of the CA’s log competition prizes.
Bob will talk about some of the stand-out places to visit and some of the much less well known. He will also suggest ways of making the very best of the time available to you, including exploiting the weather, whatever it serves up, and everything else the West Coast has to offer. He will illustrate his talk with photos but also with his charts and with anecdotes from his 15 years of surveying in West Coast waters.
Charles and Elizabeth brought their twin-keel Westerly Ocean 33 Aura across France to the Med in 2012 and after exploring Med Spain, France and Italy they arrived in Croatia for the first time in 2015. Other cruisers said they should go to Greece, and in 2017 they did, and also to Istanbul and south-west Turkey. Then in 2023, notwithstanding Croatia’s reputation for crowds and cost, they came back.
For almost a century, gangs of men called Muddies sailed Thames barges to the remote salt marshes of the Medway estuary, to dig tons of mud to satisfy the relentless demands of the cement industry. They worked hard, drank hard, got into fights, and changed the tidal flow of a river, forever. An entertaining journey through an almost forgotten piece of unique history.
Nine years ago, Paul Eedle became obsessed with owning a historic wooden boat even though he could hardly sail. He found his 1907 Looe lugger Guiding Star so rewarding despite the challenges that he asked a shipwright friend in Cornwall to design and build him a new wooden boat. Hopeful, a 30’ gaff ketch, was launched this summer. Paul tells the story of two boats which transported him to a new world.
Emma Maule from Navimaps, the UK distributor for Navionics, will talk about these popular navaids from chart cards onboard in your plotter to the Navionics Boating app on mobile and tablet, covering such things as advanced features, overlays, viewing options and how to keep your charts up to date. Emma will welcome your participation and questions. If you use the Boating app on your mobile, be sure to open it up on the evening.
Ian Herbert Jones has recently returned from both the Ocean Globe Race and the Golden Globe Race. In this talk, he describes his Golden Globe journey for which he used a unique blend of traditional navigation and cutting edge satellite technology that ultimately saved his life. Ian blends his passion for adventure sailing with a long career in the tech industry. With more than 100,000 sea miles experience, he has completed what he describes as 2.75 circumnavigations under sail.
In a field in land-locked Armenia, there lies a full-scale replica of a 13th century merchant ship. She was modelled from a time when the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia had a coastline and a mercantile fleet. Amazingly, the project was conceived when Armenia was part of the Soviet Union and built in a time of turmoil and war. When Armenia found itself a free country, the ship was transported to the Black Sea and launched.
Cruising editor Camilla Herrmann and her husband Sam Brown always wanted to sail around Britain in their Westerly Storm Kalessin of Orwell, but after Sam suffered a stroke in 2012 which left him seriously disabled and with limited speech, it really wasn’t a practicable option. They continued to sail gently, with crew, in the waters of the East Coast, the Netherlands and France.
