Fantasy cruising grounds

[Graham W]

Anyone with a trailer sailer must dream of places that they would like to cruise with their boat, even if it is unlikely that they will ever get around to visiting most of them. Here's my list, in no particular order, together with reasons why:

Stockholm Archipelago - from what I've read and to a lesser extent seen, a remarkable cruising area which is particularly worth visiting during the mad midsummer festivities.

Lake Siljan - a large and very beautiful lake far to the NW of Stockholm, with excellent wildlife. I've visited in the depths of winter (photo below) and would like to see it in summer, when it isn't frozen over, the bears are out of hibernation and the wolves can be heard howling at midnight in broad daylight. There doesn't seem to be much sailing done up there but quite a lot of motor boating. The fishing is supposed to be good.

Dutch inland waterways - tailor-made for boats like ours and well-travelled by the Dutch Drascombe Association and the Dorestad Raid

Shannon waterways - partly covered by the Irish Raid in 2012 and as seen only last week in a lyrical TV programme about the wildlife of the central area through the seasons

North Devon coast, including Lundy Island, based from Watermouth or Ilfracombe Harbours. Childhood holidays in fishing dinghies and old paddle steamers. Lundy is an ambitious offshore cruise which is occasionally undertaken by the Dinghy Cruising Association

Dee Estuary, NW England - virtually on my doorstep and often cruised by the DCA. Seems to be similar to Dutch estuary cruises (drying out in sandy creeks) and definitely needs local knowledge.

Scillies (boat shipped out on the Scillonian). Probably needs a land base, such as a cottage on Tresco, with day trips out from a sheltered anchorage

Rio Miño, Spain/Portugal border. From what I've read, a bit like the estuaries and drowned valleys of South Cornwall but much more exotic.

Venetian Lagoon - I'll do the Venice Raid one day.

Southern Ionian Islands, Greece. I've sailed around here in a friend's yacht and there are some (probably over-ambitious) cruising grounds that I would like to revisit very early one summer. The nearly extinct Monk Seal can be found off NE Cephalonia (Fiskardo).

Llŷn Peninsula, Anglesey, Bardsey Island, North Wales. Something incorporating all of these would be quite ambitious and would need good weather, not to mention attention to local pilots and the tide tables. I've visited Bardsey from Pwllheli with a young son in a Norfolk Gypsy and we were kept awake all night by the Manx Shearwaters and then Grey Seals at dawn. Likely to see four species of Dolphin, catch more Mackerel than you can possibly eat and maybe even see a Basking Shark or two.

The East Coast of Tasmania - as covered by the Tawe Nunnugah Raid and finishing with the lively Wooden Boat Festival in Hobart. The only way that this would be possible is if an Aussie Swallow Boater needed crew/ballast.

The Kimberley Coast, NW Australia - I think you might need to have a death wish to do this one in a small boat - spectacular wilderness but shared with Saltwater Crocodiles, Irukandji jellyfish, Bull Sharks, etc etc.

What other areas do forum members dream about sailing in their Swallow Boats and why? The more obscure and exotic, the better.

[Julian Swindell]

I would add Clew Bay in the West of Ireland. I kept A Drascombe Dabber there for thirteen years. The weather is generally awful, but when it is good, sailing amongst the 365 islands (one for each day of the year) is fabulous. The Guinness back at Westport helps make up for the weather.

[Andy Dingle]

That certainly stimulates the grey matter into thinking of the possibilities Graham.
Of course the list is endless and everyone will have their own particular favourites and suggestions - but I noticed the East Coast Rivers are not on your list. Easy for most of us to get to, very well documented, excellent facilities for launching, over nighting etc, sheltered waters so we can sail in virtually any conditions. I have sailed fairly extensively down there and wholeheartedly recommend it. Next years 'Swallow Boats' gathering perhaps? Just a suggestion.

I read with some interest your suggestion of the Shannon. I have already started 'planning' (read dreaming) of a cruise from Eniskillen right down to the Shannon Estuary, maybe within the next couple of years and love to hear from anyone who fancies that trip? It would take a little organisation in terms of vehicles and trailers but eminently possible - does the Irish Raid still take place? Does anyone know? The trip could be planned to coincide with that.

Again I have sailed quite a bit in the Dutch 'inland' waterways and it really should be on your 'must do' list.

How about the Clyde estuary? Does anyone sail a Swallow Boat there?  Having done a lot of diving up there I often look at the charts whilst doing some armchair planning. Lots of interesting potential there?


Andy

[Graham W]

does the Irish Raid still take place?

Organiser Albacore's business model relies on public sector subsidies to raise the sailing area's profile and these rarely last for more than one year.  There's mention on Albacore's website of a raid in Northern Europe in 2014 and somewhere more exotic this year.  No sign of either so far and certainly no sign of another Irish one.

[Graham W]

I would add Clew Bay in the West of Ireland.

I had to look that one up - it looks a bit like a mini Stockholm Archipelago but with tides.

[Michael Rogers]

Graham, I was frankly startled to see the N Devon coast on your ‘wish list’,  because from my own experience of and interest in it (and excluding the Taw/Torridge estuary, including Bideford, Appledore and Instow, which is quite different), it would be difficult to imagine a less hospitable - to the small boat sailor - stretch of coastline! 'Beetling cliffs by the surging main', high cliffs or tumbling promontories above savagely rocky foreshores forming miles of potential lee shore hazards, rolling swells generated by prevailing westerlies across miles of open sea, very few harbours or havens, occasional bays with some sand at high or low tide but not both, huge tides (12+ metres), rips and overfalls off headlands... I could go on! Imagine  the Cardigan coastline without the refuge of the Teifi estuary and much more savage where land meets sea.

There is some small boat sailing at Ilfracombe and Watersmouth: I don’t think they go far. To the East there is Lynmouth - tiny harbour with a few lobster-fishing boats, and a handful of dayboats (on precarious, drying out moorings) which almost never seem to go sailing.  To the West, don’t go anywhere near the leeshore hazards of Woolacombe, Croyde,Braunton Sands. Across Bideford Bay is Clovelly - a 1 in 3 street down to a rocky foreshore. Further West is Hartland, a graveyard for shipping for centuries, Bude - a bit of intrepid sailing there nowadays? Not until you get to Padstow and the Camel estuary does recreational sailing flourish - because it can.

The DCA do go occasionally to Lundy Island. The weather, tides etc have to be exactly right. There is no Lundy harbour as such, just a jetty where it often isn’t possible to land. I think it is regarded as a sort of scaled down version of sailing a Wayfarer to Norway. Just consider that the former working sailing boats of this area - the Bristol Channel pilot cutters - were among the toughest and most seaworthy (and most beautiful) of all UK coastal craft, because they had to be. Not recreational sailing, that.

My credentials for these comments are having grown up through my teens near Lynmouth. I was mad about boats, but sailing just wasn’t feasible on that most beautiful of coasts - we went to Poole to sail! I did do a bit of kayaking, which was a crazy thing to do there (back to that blissful ignorance of danger thing): the local fishermen, when they came across me, almost begged me to take my cockleshell (as they regarded it) ashore and stay there. I was a kid, and they seemed to feel a sense of responsibility, lifeboats (at Ilfracombe and Minehead) being miles away!

So I recommend that N Devon comes OFF your (or anyone else’s) cruising ground list, because it really isn’t one.

[Graham W]

Perhaps Watermouth wasn't such a good idea. I used to spend my childhood summers there and we would go out fishing in a 12' dinghy with spluttering Seagull outboard. Being childhood, I only remember flat calm summer days, neap tides and buckets full of Mackerel.

[Michael Rogers]

Fair enough! Sorry to be negative, but I think a procession of  BRs, BCs and BREs heading for those waters would not prove rewarding.

It's funny what one remembers. In your first bit you mentioned paddle steamers They plied up and down the N Devon coast and across to S Wales, taking passengers on and off by boat at Lynmouth if it was calm enough (which it often wasn't). They had lovely triple expansion steam engines, and on a calm day (there were a few of those) you could hear the chomping noise the paddles made long before they hove into sight around a headland. They left a very wide white wake of water churned up behind the huge paddle boxes either side.

The other memory I have is of the last very few of the coasting schooners and ketches plying their trade. In the 1950s they had sadly mutilated rigs, and more often than not they chugged along under diesel power. I think a few have been preserved/restored.

When on land-based holiday there, it remains a feature of that coast which, once you are aware of it, is  quite striking - how very few sails one sees on that wide expanse of (usually) grey-green water. Sad really, but it does reflect what an un-sailing-friendly stretch of coast it is.

[Rob Johnstone]

I agree with Micheal's comments about the N Devon coast - having sailed past it (once) in Vagabonds trip round Britain I remember large (2m) rollers over taking us and pushing us on our way and strong tide streams round the various pointy bits. However, once we had found the entrance to Ilfracombe, the place was charming and the people in the yacht club very hospitable. We were fortunate - the following two days were moderate SW breezes and the enormous tides were favourable so we were able to anchor overnight in the bay the the east of Lundy and strike out for Milford Haven early next morning. Without those two factors we would have been off to Cardiff and then the long slog along the S Wales coast.

So not for cruising.

I see that the Western Isles don't get a mention. The area around Skye is delightful and I would have thought it would be possible to organise a raid from (say) Gairloch (the northern one) south down through the narrows, round Ardnamurchan point and through the Sound of Mull to Oban. It would involved some nifty driving and ferry/ minibus work but should be able to be made to work.

In fact it was a bunch of Drascombe coasters that were charging about in this area six or so years ago that sowed the seeds for Vagabond round Britain.

Alternatively, you could start from Balvicar, go north through the Sound of Mull and round the outside of Mull, taking in Fingals Cave and Iona and back to Balvicar (tides permitting) through the Corryvechan (there is an alternative route). You'd need a weather window of about a week - reasonably OK in June or early September.........

[Graham W]

It's funny what one remembers. In your first bit you mentioned paddle steamers They plied up and down the N Devon coast and across to S Wales, taking passengers on and off by boat at Lynmouth if it was calm enough (which it often wasn't). They had lovely triple expansion steam engines, and on a calm day (there were a few of those) you could hear the chomping noise the paddles made long before they hove into sight around a headland. They left a very wide white wake of water churned up behind the huge paddle boxes either side.

The other memory I have is of the last very few of the coasting schooners and ketches plying their trade. In the 1950s they had sadly mutilated rigs, and more often than not they chugged along under diesel power. I think a few have been preserved/restored.

Attached a postcard of paddle steamers at Ilfracombe and a couple of old photographs of the Watermouth Harbour area, between Ilfracombe and Combe Martin.  If you look carefully at the latter, you can see some old sailing boats actually sailing.  I think all of these photos are from at least a hundred years ago, slightly before my time.

[Michael Rogers]

The sail shipping that had to happen along that forbidding coastline in the 19th century is a reminder of the yawning gulf between the old seaborne commerce then (mainly because of the lousy roads) and our recreational sailing now (because we want to, and so long as it's safe enough). There are old photos of smacks and ketches beached to load/unload in the few coves and bays along the coast, and at Lynmouth. Really Ilfracombe is about the only proper harbour between Watchet (east of Minehead) and Bideford - which itself was across a fearsome bar. Appledore in particular was a hive of (small) ship building. I guess the attrition rate of small coasting vessels must have been very high.

I could go on! But won't, except for two little bits of history -
1) When the Lynton and Barnstaple (narrow gauge) railway was built, one of the stations was 'Woody Bay'. The station was about 3 miles from Woody Bay itself which gave scant shelter from northwesterlies but which an entrepreneur wanted to develop as a sort of resort (around 1900). He built houses, and also a substantial pier for the paddle steamers to call at: within 3 years the winter storms had smashed the pier to smithereens. There is no trace of it now.
2) Heddons Mouth is a small bay where a little river reaches the sea. As part of the flooding centred on Lynmouth in August 1952, that little river became a raging torrent, and a big chunk of the river bank was washed away, leaving a little cliff of bright red Devon soil a few hundred yards from the beach. Later that autumn my parents and older sister, walking down to the sea there, found bones sticking out of the bank, and two complete human skeletons were unearthed, one male and one female, thought to be about a hundred years old.......?? Why buried there? Shipwrecked? - but why not taken to hallowed ground? Victims of wreckers?? An unsolved mystery.

[PeterDT]

I have had the good luck to sail in three of the areas Graham mentions, although all before my Swallow days, in rented ships of fortune.
Archipelago north of Stockholm is superb (Folkboat).
Ionian Sea dito. Around Zakynthos quite a swell (Dufour 28)
Dutch inland waters, notably Friesland, where i learned to sail as a boy. You can sail all kinds of tours through lakes and canals, and stay overnight at quiet places or in cosy marinas (Valk many times, BRe last two years). Or go out to the IJsselmeer.
Better still are the tidal flats of the shallow Wadden Sea. This is real Swallow, Drascombe and Cornish Crabber territory (Drascombe Longboat).
Or Zeeland, in the south west delta.

As for my wish list, we are taking Anna to Denmark this week. West of Fynen, Little Belt.
In the coming years i would love to sail in the UK and Brittany. And after?

[Bill Rollo]

Aside from Scotland the Baltic - start on the West coast of Jutland, through into the Belts, then up the coast of Sweden to Gothenburg, the canal through Sweden and the great lakes, and out into the Skagard to the Alands. Should fill the summer nicely...but could be split into 2-3 week sessions.

The Drascombe Association did a 'Viking Cruise' from Roskilde in Denmark to Oslo (both sites of Viking Museums) last summer which seemed to work well.

Bill

[Richard Cooper]

Hi all,

I would add a couple of "variations on a theme" which I have experienced, (albeit in slightly larger boats),to Grahams post which kicked this topic off.

For South Ionian, the "inland sea" behind Preveza, the Gulf of Amvrakos, would be nicely sheltered for small Swallow Boats, and as it is quite shallow, few larger boats get in there.

For river Shannon in Ireland, Lough Derg on its own would be worth a cruise, lots of small harbours and deserted quays to tie up on. I remember there were launching facilities in Dromineer, on the eastern side of the lake. If travelling to Ireland, the fact that Irish school holidays are quite a few weeks earlier than England can mean that travelling later within UK holidays is outside "peak time".

In UK a plug for the Norfolk broads, but really only for BR's where the mast is on a pivot to allow for lowering to go under bridges. Had a great time a few years ago on one of the 1930's original Hunter Boats engineless boats.

Richard Cooper
Storm17 Little Grebe.

[Graham W]

So many places, so little time.

Raid Finland has explored various parts of Bill's Åland Islands in the past but I can't find any evidence that it's still active.