Our boats are increasingly complicated, so reliable electrical systems are more critical than ever before. Yet reliability is a perpetual issue, especially for those who spend extended periods on board. Yachting journalist, Rupert Holmes, looks at the electrics you really need: how to anticipate problems in advance; diagnosing faults; and how to create a boat that’s resilient to as many problems as possible.
Starting out from Dartmouth in March 2019 in his 34ft boat Good Dog, Mark is attempting to visit every Harbour Master in the UK. So far, he has sailed 5,300 nautical miles, visited 170 harbours and interviewed 150 Harbour Masters in places ranging from Cornish fishing villages to urban container ports and everything between. All is in support of The Seafarers’ Charity. In this talk, he will describe some of his favourite stops and highlight some of the places you might not have thought of visiting.
Rob describes a personal journey from his first boat built - a 24ft stripped-out Quarter Ton racing yacht - to the studio’s most recent work, including a 160ft expedition yacht currently under construction. It spans the transition between pencils, splines and ducks through early computerisation to various high level CAD/CAM processes. It’s an art-meets-science journey, where the former still plays a huge part.
After more than 30 years sailing the Scottish islands Chris is as entranced by them as ever. Camera always at the ready, his blog - which won the 2020 Lacey Trophy - celebrates this combination of sometimes challenging sailing, remoteness, stunning scenery and wildlife. His talk will cover two extended cruises from an excellent 2021 season and also share some guiding principles that have helped him and Ann get the most from this remarkable cruising area.
In 1772 on the second of his three voyages to the South Seas, James Cook was delighted to fix the position of the Resolution to within 30 miles, thanks to Larcum Kendall’s (more expensive) copy of John Harrison’s watch and a sextant he could barely lift.
When Flying Officer A.C. Clarke first proposed geostationary communications satellites in May 1945, a few days after VE day, no one was actually sure if radio waves could pass up through the atmosphere at all; so far, they had tended to bounce back.
Our annual joint event with the Royal Institute of Navigation will be by webinar as our speaker is in Australia, but we will be broadcasting from CA House. Come and join us for a social evening: there will be no charge.
Penny’s talk will cover the fundamental causes of tides, understanding harmonic constituents, how tidal models work, and the future of tidal prediction and forecasting.
James Littlewood won the prestigious Hanson Trophy in the CA’s log competition. In this talk he reflects on his sailing career from racing his Achilles 24 Bluefinn from Harwich to Ostend in July 1980, with just an outboard engine and no GPS, to his 2020 winning entry, which introduces us to Henry Montagu Doughty.
Jimmy will describe how, in late 2020, he completed a 4000-mile maiden voyage on his new Aventura Zero, a fully electric Outremer catamaran. The aim of the voyage was to test the sustainability of a sailing boat with electric propulsion on an offshore voyage, and whether the onboard consumption could be covered by the generation of electricity from renewable sources.
