SHORT CRUISES
How to get the best out of a mini adventure when time is limited
Coronavirus, delayed or cancelled launch dates and closed borders has put paid to many plans of long summers afloat this year. If you have a limited amount of time in which to go on your summer cruise, as many of us might at the moment, there is still plenty of adventure to be had. In fact, if properly planned and considered, you may well find that having a strict time limit on your sailing can focus the mind and provide some new experiences which may not have revealed themselves if you have all the time in the world.
Half the fun of cruising is in the planning; looking at charts and maps and deciding where you might go next to explore – and we’ve all had plenty of that planning time recently. I’m often surprised once I get the charts out just how many spots there are to visit in our local cruising grounds, and if you are on a compressed time schedule, just how close some destinations are when you start thinking about how to get there fast.
It’s generally pretty relaxing to sail in familiar waters where surprises are hard to come by, but all sorts of value can be added to the summer cruise by exploring somewhere new. There will be fresh challenges for sure, but who knows what unexpected rewards await us? It’ll be more exciting for you and your crew, and anyway, it does no harm to extend ourselves, even if you’re not extending your range.
We might even learn something; I often do when sailing around in places not far from home but new to me. If you are not going to be planning a long trip then the area in which you might be able to sail will be severely limited, especially if we are looking for destinations we can reach on a one-tide passage and avoiding overnight sails, which is how we usually like to plan our passages.
FURTHER AFIELD
If you do want to get away from your home cruising grounds, but are still looking to squeeze your sail into a short time frame,
then it is worth considering how to adapt your usual cruising in order to make the most out of the time you have. Maybe night sailing is not high up on your list of likes, but it could be worth doing one or two in order to get to your destination a little quicker.
Overnight stops are a real killer in terms of passage times, so eliminating these is a great way to speed up your time to a destination. Looking in terms of miles, the south of Ireland is roughly a 350-mile sail away from the Solent. Without unlucky weather or wind on the nose the entire sail, this could be achievable in a three- to four-day sail. That sort of trip is not for everyone, but it does go to show how close seemingly distant destinations can be for the sailor willing to put in a long journey to get there.
If you are not looking for such a big undertaking then sailing to a destination over the course of several weekends to get your boat in place before your week off is a good option. This extends the time you get to explore your destination of choice without placing a mammoth sail at the start or the end of it. It also gives the option of several enjoyable weekends of sailing on the way round, without eating into your holiday.
USE YOUR DRAUGHT
If you do not have the time or the inclination for a long trip then discovering new cruising
grounds near home can be a thoroughly exciting prospect, and usually means taking the road less travelled, finding anchoring spots far from the crowds and being a little more self sufficient.
One of the big limitations in finding places near us that are new, is that they are often off the beaten track and therefore more of an adventure to get to. River exploration and the like offers a great deal of interest for the cruising sailor and can give a whole different complexion to an area of coastline already well trodden.
It is stating the obvious but the shallower the draught you have the better because a shallow draught can open up a lot more anchoring possibilities, particularly in creeks and rivers. Even better is having a yacht that can take the bottom at low tide and then there will be possibilities in many smaller harbours, which can open up new horizons not accessible by everyone.
For the average cruising yacht with a draught of perhaps 1.5m you will need to exercise a bit more caution as you need a minimum water depth of something over 2m – perhaps even a bit more bearing in mind that the yacht will swing around over quite an area when at anchor when the tide or wind changes.
GET SET FOR MICRO-ADVENTURES
Generous fuel and water capacities can be very useful. If you can avoid having to refuel on a week’s cruise that can be a bonus, but it is often water that can pose more of a problem. On the west coast of Scotland, I have taken a large plastic container ashore to fill up with water from a stream but there is no guarantee about the quality here so I have always carried some bottled water for drinking or to go with the whisky.
Most of the time you will not know what is likely to be a safe anchorage until the day before because most anchorages are weather dependent. They are only useable in certain wind directions, making it challenging to plan too far in advance.
Large scale paper charts are usually good at showing the detail inshore but much of this detail can be lost on electronic charts. I had planned to take a yacht into what looked like a good sheltered cove off the coast of Tunisia but when I looked at the electronic chart it showed no detail of what lay under the water there. The paper chart was a little better but it did not give me enough confidence to anchor there. Information about the seabed can also be helpful to find reliable holding ground but it is becoming increasingly difficult to find on charts these days.
For positioning you can use GPS but you may still be able to use transit lines from objects on the shore. The thing with navigating into remote anchorages is to use all of the systems that you have available, and eyesight is one of the best as even the surface of the water can give clues about what lies under the water. Of course you also