EPIC SUMMER ADVENTURES
You don’t have to sail to the most distant parts of the world to have a cruising adventure. If you have only a week or two of summer holidays to play with, you plan to thoroughly sea trial yacht and crew before embarking on a longer ocean voyage, or you are after a season of sailing adventure, there are wonderful places right here on our doorstep in northern Europe.
We asked some of our most travelled contributors where they would pick to sail to for a world-class epic sailing adventure within striking distance of their home ports. These were their picks – and they explain why, where you should go, and what to take (or leave behind).
THE WEST COUNTRY
FORMER EDITOR DAVID GLENN GREW UP SAILING IN THE UK’S WEST COUNTRY AND ARGUES IT’S STILL AMONG THE WORLD’S FINEST CRUISING GROUNDS
Although Poole might be regarded as the gateway to the West Country, most yachtsmen will want to press on beyond Berry Head. There, I would suggest, cruising proper begins.
Weymouth has a lot to offer, but when that freeing wind sets in, time your run to five nautical miles off Portland Bill to catch the first of the westgoing ebb and before you know it you’ll have Berry Head on the nose. There, the fishing port of Brixham has done much to improve its once lowly status with an excellent marina and seafood restaurants to die for, thanks to the burgeoning fishing co-operative.
Further west, considerably more beckons. Three spectacular rivers, the Dart, Tamar and Fal, not only divide the West Country into manageable cruising areas, providing staging posts from which smaller harbours and anchorages can be explored, but also offer self-contained pocket cruising grounds in their own right.
They are blessed with everything from safe access and shelter in all weather, picture postcard towns and the sort of tranquillity and unspoilt beauty in their upper reaches which, on a still summer’s evening, epitomise part of what cruising in the
