The Regional Cruising conference took place at the Birchwood Conference Centre in Warrington with sponsorship from Sherlock Foams, Mailspeed Marine, Honnor Marine and CraftInsure. Approximately 110 people attended.
The keynote address was by Tom Cunliffe, the subject “cruising yesterday, today and tomorrow”.
Living in landlocked Manchester, Tom’s father, an arm-chair voyager, packed 14 year old Tom and his school friend off to the Norfolk Broads on British Rail. Similar trips became regular biannual events and in his early 20s Tom abandoned a law degree in Liverpool and signed up on the virtual wreck of a 70 foot Baltic Trader, somewhere on the S Coast. Several months of remedial work later and with 30 tons of concrete ballast recently spread through the bilges one New Year’s Eve, they set off down channel and across Biscay. Storms followed and in the midst of a black night with three feet of water sloshing through the boat and the cabin dog swimming for his life, eyes glowing in the light from a solitary storm lantern, they set about digging a hole back through 2 feet of concrete with pick axes to allow the water to reach the pumps! Finally making land fall Tom returned home to reclaim his girlfriend (soon to be wife) before the lodger did….
A series of “classic” boats followed. With his new wife, Tom bought a Colin Archer sloop and headed for Brazil and an Atlantic circuit. A sextant, watch and compass were the only navigation aids. They later fell in love with Hirta, an elderly although extremely seaworthy Bristol Pilot Cutter in which they cruised extensively, includng the Baltic, Norway, the Faroes, Iceland and across to N America. So much for the past. The present involved the building of Westerman, a Bristol Pilot look-a-like but designed by Nigel Irons and built using modern materials and technology. Not only was she easier to sail but she didn’t leak! GPS and later a chart plotter graced the chart table although a sextant was still carried and a position inscribed hourly on the paper charts. Tom showed a few photographs of “plastic fantastics” and grudgingly admitted some were probably ok (eg Hallberg Rassay, Malo, Najad etc) and that he might come to one someday in the future! For a short vision of the future we were shown a 60 foot £1.75 million carbon spar aero rig sloop and, with the current pace of development in electronics and servo systems, Tom thought that it would soon be possible to allow your vessel to sail itself across the Atlantic and then to go out and meet it 24 hours east of the west Indies to make the final approach together. While amazed by what has become possible, he expressed deep concern for the loss of the simple freedom of the seas which he had experienced in his youth and which he feared was no longer so available to the younger generation of today.
Frank Singleton, an ex senior forecaster from the Met Office, followed with a comprehensive summary of the various means by which weather information could be accessed whilst afloat (title: “Weather forecasts, on board technology and communications”). Within touch of land the BBC shipping forecast, VHF forecasts transmitted by the coastguard and weather information downloaded from the internet via mobile phone were all discussed. Further offshore (up to 400 miles or more) forecasts were transmitted through Navtex, a part of the GMDSS system, while in mid ocean there were various weather sources which could be accessed directly or again through the internet via SSB radio or , more expensively, via satellite phone. Grib files were discussed and an animation shown. Finally the Immarsat system of geostationary satellites was mentioned and described as the mid-ocean equivalent of Navtex.. For further information visit Frank’s extremely informative website www.franksweather.co.uk).
Professor David Last was due to speak on “satellite navigation; truths and myths. Unfortunately David had been called to the USA at short notice but sent his lecture in video format. He covered the development of GPS, discussed the risks to universal coverage and gave a number of examples where the signal had been severely compromised or completely lost. He discussed Galileo, the European system under development, and noted that there were other systems coming on stream from Russia, China and Japan. All would give signals within the same frequency range which could therefore be accessed through the same GPS receiver on a “mix and match” basis. He also mentioned “e-loran”, a development of the original Loran system, which was terrestrially based and with an accuracy similar to GPS. Small boat receivers were likely to become available in the not too distant future.
A short fill-in session at the end of the lunch break discussed LED light, increasingly used both as cabin and navigation lights because of their significantly reduced power consumption compared with conventional lights. Less well known was the potential risk that the inverters integral to many systems could cause major interference with other on board electronics; also that the absence of a point source for the light created a significant error in navigation light sectoring of up to 20 degrees. It was claimed that at present the lights therefore failed to comply with the collision regulations.
In the afternoon Stuart Carruthers and Gus Lewis from the RYA hosted a two hour question and answer session covering a variety of topical and/or controversial issues facing cruising sailors at present and with which the RYA were involved. E-borders were discussed at length and roundly condemned as ill conceived and unworkable. Spectrum pricing for radio frequencies was mentioned but we were reassured that there would be no reintroduction of the radio licence fee for leisure sailors. Other issues covered included the “Marine and coastal Access Bill”, leisure vessel fatality statistics (24 deaths last year but mostly fishermen or heart attacks and very few accidental “sailing deaths”), the status of Personal Water craft as vessels (with new regulations arriving in the next few months), alcohol in boats, wind-farms, passage planning, red diesel (with the revenue unenthusiastic and the changes likely to cost more than would be received in additional revenue) and finally “out of date” flares and the problem of disposal.
The meeting was closed shortly after 1600 hours with all agreeing that it had been an enjoyable and informative day.
Roger Chisholm
Manchester Cruising Association