The Royal Cruising Club Pilotage Foundation publishes pilotage information through books and a range of media acessible through its own website www.rccpf.org.uk.
Reviews of the most recent RCCPF Publications and other books written by RCC members are shown below.
Mark Fishwick compiled his first West Country Cruising in 1988, and the publication of a Tenth Edition by Fernhurst Books is a testament to its continuing popularity.
Cruising Guide to the Netherlands and Belgium is a new first edition from the Royal Cruising Club Pilotage Foundation.
Skip Novak on Sailing: Words of Wisdom from 50 Years Afloat is a fascinating collection of articles contributed to Yachting World between 2014 and 2023.
A Cruising Adventure and How-To Guide by Nicholas Coghlan
Royal Cruising Club Pilotage Foundation Balearic Islands 12th Edition, David and Susie Baggaley
Andrew Wilkes reviews Marek Jurczynski's publication
Skipper Lynam developed his love of the sea and sailing as a schoolboy at King William’s College on the Isle of Man becoming, in time, a successful canoe sailor.
Review of Royal Cruising Club Pilotage Foundation publication ‘Norway, Mainland coast, fjord and islands, including Svalbard and Jan Mayen’ 4th Edition
Bermuda, Azores, Madeira Group, Canary Islands and Cape Verdes:
Editor: Jane Russell, RCC, RCCPF Publisher: Royal Institution of Navigation, 2020. Available as a free download
Nigel Wollen reviews Mark Fishwick's West Country Cruising Companion
An excellent pilot by Madeleine and Stephan Strobel updated May 2020.
4th Edition. By Rod and Lucinda Heikell. A Review of this welcome update by Will Pedder
This practical guide deserves a place of honour on the chart table of any sailing yacht venturing to the Chilean channels or, as Bill Tillman referred to them, ‘the magical place of the unknown’.
"The book is a triumph, and represents a significant raising of the bar. Jo is to be congratulated, and I do hope readers will be enthused sufficiently to cruise the South China Sea."
This book is a very practical guide to long distance ocean sailing, compiled by a very accomplished and experienced practitioner and aimed at the would-be ocean sailor.
This meticulously updated 8th edition invites the cruising sailor to safely explore numerous exquisite locations, reassured by the author's wealth of experience.
Our review of September 2019 updated to include CCA review as a download. This book is not a “how to do it” manual, more a compendium of the most important issues.....
"I commend Christopher and the RCCPF team on producing an excellent book that will be an invaluable resource to anyone making this trip (Trinidad to Tobago) for the first time"
Reviewed by Peter Bruce who says: "This Second Edition is thoroughly comprehensive and gives those with it a huge advantage over those without."
Reviewer Jay Devonshire writes: "An up to date Pilot Book is an essential, and this latest publication is to to be recommended."
For many a sailor, crossing the Atlantic Ocean is their holy grail, the equivalent of scaling Mount Everest for a climber. Both are immense challenges and preparation is key.
The RCC Pilotage Foundation has recently brought out a fourth edition, published by Imray, of their extensive guide to The Baltic Sea and its Approaches.
‘Gibraltar and the five Mediterranean costas of Spain form the subject matter of this pilot.’
Paul Heiney's lavishly illustrated book warrants a well-deserved place in the chart table and has plenty of general interest for those seeking inspiration for their next cruise.
This is a beautifully produced and extremely well structured guide to this very long and diverse cruising ground. Reviewed by Katharine Ingram
The Canary Islands Guide is very much a guide for tourists rather than a pilot book, but as such it has the information for a touring yachtsman to enjoy these islands.
For such a small country The Netherlands has an amazing 6,000km of navigable waterways and there is something there for everyone.
The revised edition of the Arctic and Northern Waters Pilot is a compelling volume that takes the reader into waters that few will travel, for those who go there it is essential reading.
Reviewers Katharine & Peter Ingram write: "This RCC Pilotage Foundation book is a beautifully produced and extremely well structured guide to the vast cruising area that is the Pacific Ocean."
The 3rd Edition of this very useable cruising companion is brought right up to date (2016) by Derek Aslett. Published by Fernhurst Books and available through Imray and many local chandleries.
The newly published third edition of the RCC Pilotage Foundation Norway pilot book by Judy Lomax is reviewed below by Madeleine Strobel
A Sixth Edition of the RCCPF Atlantic Islands Pilot has just been published by Imray. It is reviewed by Alan Spriggs (RCC) below.
This is the 7th edition of this well-known and popular book. There is much that is new in this edition, all beautifully explored and explained.
I believe every RCC member would delight in this book. First published in 1957 and recently re-discovered by the esteemed publisher Julia Jones for Golden Duck it is the story of a young man and woman, in love, engaged but not yet married who buy, fit out and sail a fifteen-ton Kings Lynn pilot cutter from the Hamble to Scrabster in the winter of 1939-40 then use her to ferry dangerous cargo across the Pentland Firth to Lyness to support the war effort. Much of what is recounted would be scarcely believable as fiction but it happens to be a true story, dramatically told and beautifully written by Antony Bridges.
Antony had joined Dartmouth as a naval cadet but an injury and infection, before the days of penicillin, left him with a twisted ankle and frozen knee so he was invalided out and pursued a career as a barrister in London whilst escaping to go sailing whenever he could. He became an experienced offshore sailor and member of the RORC. Margaret Townsend was a horsewoman who broke her pelvis in a fall so sold her saddle to buy a 6-ton cutter, became an adventurous sailor and also a RORC member. Antony and Margaret met at Cowes when offshore racing. As war approached in 1939 neither could be employed in the services (Wrens were not employed as boats’ crews until 1941) but both were driven by a passionate desire to do something useful for the war effort. Antony sought work using his pilot cutter, Mermaid, to ferry cargo and eventually landed an unlikely contract to carry gelignite from Scrabster, across the Pentland Firth to Lyness in Scapa Flow. Having removed the Fleet Anchorage’s WW1 defences between the wars the government was hastily trying to rebuild them after the battleship Royal Oak was sunk at anchor by a German U Boat.
The narrative takes off: the Mermaid is fitted out at Bursledon overseen, largely, by Margaret then, with the help of an older friend Kirk, the pair set off in December 1939. They install new mast and rigging in Teignmouth, saw six feet off the boom and get into all sorts of trouble in Milford Haven where Margaret, wrestling with the anchor cable in a storm, loses the top of her forefinger! After some first aid and a tot of rum she looks at her companions and says, “You’re both very solemn!” followed by “What I’d really like now is some breakfast!” She is dropped off in Dunlaoire to recuperate with family in Ireland for Christmas then rejoins in Scotland as they navigate the Caledonian Canal then time their run up from Invergordon to the Pentland Firth to catch the start of the west-going stream to Scrabster. All is beautifully described. Prevented from sheltering in Wick by the weather they spend a long January night between that port and Duncansby Head, Antony writes: It did not blow more than a deathly, questing air, that slapped and whined amongst the rigging. The watchkeeper, bunched against the cockpit coaming, would see not even a kindly glow from the skylight, which was blacked out, but only the binnacle, the beginnings of spars, the ghostly mass of the mainsail, and the baleful gleams overside, where the tops of waves broke like the snarl of wolves.
They reach Scrabster next day and started on 2 years of unimaginable hard graft, loading gelignite and other stores into Mermaid, carrying their dangerous cargo across the Pentland Firth to Kirkwall and returning. Their fleet expands as they add a sailing trawler and a steel-hulled drifter and Antony writes compellingly, often amusingly, of the people they have to deal with, the beauty of the natural world and their many adventures. I was enthralled by this absolute gem of a book and cannot recommend it too highly. Cost £13.99 from Golden Duck
Reviewed by David Mowlam
