Like nearly everybody else, I suspect, we had to put Easter sailing plans on hold because of the weather. Yes, Easter was early, and perhaps it was ambitious to be thinking of a shakedown cruise, but long weekends are few and far between - and even the most pessimistic wouldn't have expected snow AND gales.
Anyway, discretion being the better part of valour, we left the boat safely moored, and, determined to make nautical use of the free time, I settled down to passage planning for our summer holiday trip.
Now I know there are those who would regard this as tempting fate. Why plan on leaving on a particular date when you may be delayed by the weather? (Hopefully not snow and gales in June!)
However, as we're planning to spend our summer holiday doing Royal Torbay YC's Triangle two-handed race, the timetable is more or less fixed.
We did this three-legged race back in 1990, in our Sigma 33, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The sailing part is a challenge, with a 240-mile leg from Torquay to Kinsale, in southern Ireland, a 280-mile leg from Kinsale to Treguier, in north Brittany, and then a 100-mile sprint back to Torquay, but that's only part of it.
It's also a great social event, with parties at all the stopovers, and the chance to share experiences and make new friendships with like-minded fellow competitors. The standard at the front of the fleet is high, but it's one of those events where just finishing is recognised as an achievement, and there's a really friendly atmosphere, sometimes missing in competitive sailing.
We've always meant to go back and do the race again, but there's always been too much to fit into those all-too brief holidays from full-time jobs. The race is designed to fit into a fortnight, to suit such circumstances, but if you are based on the East Coast, as we are, there is also the matter of getting the boat to Torquay and back, adding two more, even longer legs to the race.
But we thought that doing the race, and those delivery trips, would not only provide an enjoyable summer holiday, with lots of sailing, and also some fun and relaxation in between, but also a reasonably demanding rehearsal for long-distance two-up cruising when we retire - what we had in mind when we bought this boat.
We have already sailed some 6,000 miles in her, and we know that two-handed we will have our hands pretty full. Hence the need to do some detailed passage planning in advance.
During our Fastnet campaign last summer I devised a system of putting all the information into one of those display books with clear pockets to slip in everything from sailing instructions to tide tables.
You have no idea in advance of what the wind direction will be, so there's no realistic prediction of ETA for each leg - obviously if we are running under spinnaker we will get there twice as fast as if we are facing a dead beat.
So what I do is to estimate how long each section of the passage will take at a range of speeds, and work out a likely time frame: we won't get there any earlier, except in exceptional circumstances, and we'll be unlucky to get there any later.
Then I work out what the tide will be doing within that “window” and note down the times of high and low water at ports of arrival and departure. Having this information instantly to hand, rather than having to leaf through the almanac and find it, when you are tired at the end of a long crossing, makes landfall a lot less stressful.
I also photocopy the relevant tidal atlas pages (cut out from an out of date almanac) to create a custom, hour by hour tide flow picture for the likely duration of the race. This might seem over the top, but it proved its worth during last summer's persistently wet and windy conditions. It's easy to refer to, and those plastic pockets are waterproof!
Anyway, it was a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend an otherwise miserable afternoon. It was useful revision, doing tidal calculations for secondary ports and so on. And it brought back all kinds of memories of previous visits to the waters in question.
I could have saved myself an awful lot of trouble by just punching in the numbers on the plotter, and letting it give me the information automatically, but somehow that wouldn't be the same. (Although I'll use it to check my tide times!).
Electronics are wonderful, and I wouldn't be without them. But working your way through the Almanac offers another layer of reassurance.
Reeds has announced that, later this year it will be making the almanac available online (for a fee, yet to be disclosed). It will be interesting to see just how popular that proves.
I have a suspicion that a lot of people, who spend their working lives staring into computer screens, still find the printed page more user-friendly in a leisure context.
I certainly prefer to have the passage plan on paper, rather than in virtual form.
