AUTHORS AND CONTRIBUTORS
Books and e-pilots
William has been cruising since his childhood and took his first command to Brittany at the age of
23. He has subsequently cruised in a variety of small boats from Spain to a circumnavigation
of Iceland before the days of GPS. He has been a member of the Royal Cruising Club since 1980.
He has owned a succession of boats and currently sails a 30ft cat rigged fast cruiser out of
Falmouth. He has four children and runs his own business in the financial services sector.
He has taken over responsibility for the N.Brittany pilot following John Lawson's death.
Henry
learnt to sail dinghies at school and caught the bug. Two years of general
service training at Dartmouth and in the Fleet provided skills in
navigation, seamanship and engineering in ships, yachts and powerboats of
many types before he sank beneath the waves as a submariner. Fortunate to join Gabriel Clay RCC as crew/co-skipper for 30
years, he cruised to Norway, the Baltic, Scotland, Ireland, France,
Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar and most harbours in the Channel. He bought a
Hallberg-Rassy in 2006 and has covered 17,000 miles in the Baltic and
cruised the Atlantic
coast of Europe, completing an Atlantic circuit via the Atlantic islands, East Caribbean and Bermuda,
and then through the Mediterranean to Turkey.
Peter Carnegie discovered sailing on settling in Jersey in 1963. Early ventures in small sailing boats convinced him that the Channel Islands have something special to offer aspiring yachtsmen and in 1976 he co-founded Jersey Cruising School. Through years of intensive sailing in the area, mostly as Instructor and charter skipper, he has gained an intimate knowledge of its harbours and anchorages. This forms the basis of his RCC Pilotage Foundation pilot The Channel Islands. As a keen pilot he has overflown all the harbours and anchorages described in The Channel Islands. Many of the air views were taken by his son James, a professional photographer. Peter and his wife Julia have brought up their four children in the sailing tradition, cruising as far afield as Mediterranean and Caribbean waters. Their present yacht is a Jeanneau 42 based in St Helier.
A first long cruise to the Baltic in 1995 followed 25 years of sailing experience on the British and French coasts.
Since 1998 they have kept their boat in Sweden and made frequent visits to Baltic Countries. In 2005 they became
Joint Secretaries of the Cruising Association's Baltic Section and have received a number of CA awards for their work
in gathering harbour and pilotage information, work in the Section and for many articles published over the years.
Publications include Hamble to Helsinki (2000) and
Harbours of the Baltic States (ongoing).
Anne Hammick has been involved with the Pilotage Foundation for more than 20 years. Atlantic Islands was her first book, researched during 1987/88 and written at the chart table on a portable typewriter. She has updated each subsequent edition and has no intention of stopping just yet. She has also updated editions of The Atlantic Crossing Guide, Atlantic Spain & Portugal, Islas Baleares and The Baltic Sea, and done the aerial photography for yet more. From a sailing family, she first cruised long-distance in 1975 and since then has made eight Atlantic crossings, six as skipper/navigator, including the 1981 Two-handed Transatlantic Race. An RYA Ocean Yachtmaster, most of her long passages were made without the help of electronic (satellite) navigation systems. She has written more than a dozen books on sailing subjects and is editor of Flying Fish, the biannual journal of the Ocean Cruising Club. She was awarded the Royal Cruising Club Challenge Cup in 1987 and elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation in 2001. She lives aboard her elderly Rustler 31 in Falmouth, Cornwall.
Annie
Hill has been enjoying an almost continuous roving commission since
1975. In this time she has sailed over 150,000 miles, largely on
two boats: the junk-rigged, plywood, 34 ft Badger and the
gaff-rigged, steel, 35 ft Iron Bark. In this time she has
sailed from 73° N to 61° S, has cruised in the Atlantic and Pacific
Oceans, and spent a winter aboard in Greenland, frozen in for 7 months.
She has written two books: Voyaging on a Small Income and
Brazil and Beyond, both of which are still in print. She sails
with Trevor Robertson, the builder of Iron Bark, who has the
unique record of having over wintered both in Antarctica and above the
Arctic Circle in a completely unsponsored, home-built boat.
Pete Hill made his first ocean crossing in 1972 and has sailed more than
185,000 miles, largely in junk rigged yachts built by him.
Ros Hogbin has sailed since childhood and raced in the Fastnet and the Phuket King's Cup Regatta. She has crossed the South Pacific as part of a circumnavigation, which she completed with her husband on their Nicholson 43. Ros co-authored the book The Mind of the Sailor (Adlard Coles Nautical) about adventures and mis-adventures at sea and has written on cruising and racing for Sailing Today and Yachting World. She is Assistant Director (editorial and web) for the RCC Pilotage Foundation and spends her spare time on her UFO 34, exploring UK and adjacent waters with her family of 3 small boys.
Willy Ker has been ocean racing and cruising under sail since 1948. He first sailed to the Faroe Islands in the family Contessa 32 Assent in 1982 and circumnavigated Iceland in 1983. Since then Assent has cruised both the East and West coasts of Greenland a number of times, as well as the East coast of Baffin Island. Between 1991 and 1995, Assent sailed to the Antarctic Peninsula and across the Pacific to Alaska and Eastern Russia, returning via the Great Lakes to the ‘Eastern Seaboard’ and Labrador. Faroe, Iceland and Greenland have all been revisited more than once since. Originally trained as a topographical surveyor, hydrography is now his hobby. He is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation.
Mike Lewin-Harris's sailing experience over the past 50 years ranges from a 16' Salcombe Yawl between Chichester and Poole to a leg of the first ever Whitbread Round-The-World Race. He kept his 46' wooden classic ocean racer in the Baltic for 3 years, and currently sails a Najad 391, which he has cruised in the Med and transatlantic, and is now about to return to the Baltic. He is the revising author for Isles of Scilly and co-ordinating author for The Baltic.
Judy Lomax started sailing as a child in her father’s GB14, and progressed with her husband David to family holidays afloat on their first yacht, Eridani. In 1985, they bought Cloud Walker, a Beneteau First 345 with which they crossed the Atlantic by the trade wind route, returning via Greenland, Iceland and the Faroes to Norway. Since then, they have spent many summers sailing in Norway, exploring islands, fjords and mainland harbours and anchorages between the Swedish and the Russian borders. They have also spent a couple of summers sailing in Svalbard, on the second occasion returning to the UK via Jan Mayen. In 1991, they crewed on a 75ft replica Viking longship, Gaia, from Trondheim to Washington. They have been members of the Royal Cruising Club since 1986. Judy is grateful to the many RCC members whose cruising notes, collected over 60 years, were the starting point for this book.
John Marchment started sailing in 1946 in a Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter, Christabel, from Falmouth and has, since then, sailed in most oceans of the world in all sorts of sailing craft, ranging from a Firefly to a 12 metre. He has owned a Shearwater catamaran, a Contessa 26, a Rustler 31 and a First 345. Initially his sailing was concentrated on the Channel Isles/Brittany coast areas which are easily accessible from his home in Weymouth. In 1984, he was fortunate to find a job in La Spezia, where he spent 8 happy years sailing/motoring in the Mediterranean with the First 345. He has worked for the Pilotage Foundation for 9 years and has been responsible for writing several editions of most of the western Mediterranean areas.
Jeremy Parkinson has cruised since boyhood as a member of Weymouth Sailing Club when he crewed for three summers aboard a converted Cornish lugger, cruising the North French and Netherlands coasts from Treguier to Amsterdam. He bought his first cruising yacht in 1972, a Pandora 22 in which he cruised the Channel Islands and North Brittany. An Eygthene 24 and a Sadler 25 followed until in 1988 he bought his present yacht, a bright green Contessa 28 Feanor. He has been a member of the Royal Cruising Club since 1997 and since then has cruised nearly all the coasts of Europe and Scandinavia from Bergen in Norway to Göçek in Turkey including most of the Baltic, Scotland and Ireland and the northern shores of the Mediterranean.
Steve Pickard learned to sail in a YM Senior and after a series of near disasters in that and other craft finally learnt his trade and ceased to be a danger to navigation. In more recent times he has cruised from the Arctic to the Caribbean but spends most of his time in the Mediterranean. More recently still he repatriated Maurice Griffiths old yacht Lone Gull from a graveyard berth in Tunisia and an old Westerly from sultry Trinidad, sailing her solo back to Europe. He lives in the South of France with his wife Deirdre in a house they built overlooking the Rhone.
Mike Redfern cut his sailing teeth on the Helford and Solent but often in both and is still learning. He has cruised the French coast down to La Rochelle, the West coast of Scotland, in the Mediterranean, the Bahamas and up to Germany. Mike spent four years exploring much of the Baltic including the Baltic States, the Finnish Lakes and the Gulf of Bothnia before moving on to Norway. He cruises their Westerly Oceanranger with his wife Liz and a variety of long suffering guests who seem to come back for more.
Jane Russell grew up sailing and team-raced dinghies at University, where she met her husband, David. After graduating, they bought an old 37ft steel sloop Tinfish, and lived aboard in Swansea. In 1995 they set off across the Atlantic, sailing via Senegal and the Gambia River before heading across to Barbados. They spent 18 months in the Caribbean, including a hurricane season exploring the coast of Venezuela before heading up to Jamaica, Cayman, Belize and Guatemala. They completed a 5 year circumnavigation via Panama, Suez and the French canals. On their return home, they bought a 24ft Strider catamaran which they sailed with young children around the West Country. They are currently based in Norfolk, where they are fitting out Tinfish II, a 39ft, steel, Mike Pocock design, perfect for crossing oceans with the family. Jane has edited a number of routes for the Pilotage Foundation Website and is working on the new edition of the Atlantic Crossing Guide.
Penny Scott-Bayfield began cruising with her parents in their Warrior 36 as a baby and has been sailing ever since. With her Contessa 32, Super C, she has cruised the French and Spanish Atlantic coasts with a brief foray to Norway. She very much enjoyed updating the Cruising Guide to West Africa with information from much more adventurous sailors, while keeping Super C based in Suffolk.
Ewen Southby-Tailyour is a third generation (his godfather was his honorary grandfather!) member of the RCC and has sailed all his life. Having been brought up on board a seven-ton Polperro Hooker and a 35 ton Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter he now owns a 12-ton gaff cutter Black Velvet that he had especially built for high-latitude cruising. In addition to Falkland Islands Shores he has contributed to Faroe Iceland Greenland.
We feel that we have a special connection to the coast of Finland. We had three summers sailing up there in 1992-94 and found it to be our favourite cruising ground. I (Jill) have also been the FPI editor for Finland for about the last 17 years.
Martin Walker is the Director of the Pilotage Foundation. His background includes extensive cruising in the English Channel, Eastern Mediterranean and Western Baltic throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Baltic and Channel plus two handed racing - Observer TWOSTAR Plymouth to Newport Transatlantic, Round Britain and Ireland Race, Yachting Monthly Triangle races in the 1980s, Current boat Oyster 435 Hookey of Hamble - Circumnavigation and then Atlantic Circuit including East Coast USA in 1990s, Mediterranean including Black Sea in 2000s.
Passage Planning Guides
Tony was promoted Commander in 1982 but was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 1987 which dramatically curtailed his Royal Naval career. He left the Navy in 1991 and ran a private hospital in Sheffield before setting out in 1997 on a round-the-world cruise in his yacht Fortuna with his partner, Serena. Arriving at Langkawi in 2006 they decided to settle there and have now acquired both a house and dogs,
Annette and I cruised Northern Europe with our two children for 30 years. Then in 2000 on my retirement we set sail in Nordlys, our S&S designed Swan 47, after spending 5 years getting her ready for a long trip to both hot and cold climates. A nine year circumnavigation of 54,000 miles followed. From 60N, the Shetland Islands, to 42S, The south of Tasmania, Nordlys looked after us. The learning curve was steep, examples being: anchoring techniques in the weed of South Australia, the silt of Tasmania and in coral atolls. The ability to get GRIB files and their limitations plus of course dealing with local officials. If we can help others enjoy the cruising life as we were helped by those ahead of us then it will add to our memories.
Proof readers
Sandy Watson is a former Royal Navy submarine engineer. As a teenager he learnt to sail in dinghies (mostly Fireflies and National 12s) and then discovered the joys of cruising when he married into a Royal Cruising Club family. He and his wife, Winkie, have graduated from owning a Halcyon 27 through a Rustler 31 to their present yacht, a Westerly Sealord, which they sail from a base in Portland harbour. For some years he ran the Royal Cruising Club's Foreign Port Information service and set up the RCCPF's desktop publishing organisation.