With the new lockdown – boat and our home both in the highest tier of antivirus restrictions – winter sailing plans are off for the moment.
So the only boating thing getting done here is proof correcting for the new edition of Pass Your Yachtmaster, by David Fairhall and the late Mike Peyton, the cartoonist.
It involved writing a lot more new material than I expected – or perhaps I should have realised, given the speed at which electronic navigation, marine communications, emergency location, search and rescue and numerical weather forecasting have developed during the 38 years the little book has been in print.
In fact, some things have already changed since I sent in the text in June: for example the RYA’s teaching methods for chartplotters have moved on yet again. And I was waiting until now to update the lines about reporting procedures for yachts going to and from the EU from 1 January. It is still not entirely clear or confirmed.
There’s a bit of a copyright hiccup over the cartoons, which is yet to be sorted by Adlard Coles/Bloomsbury, the publishers, so we’re not entirely sure the book will be on the shelves by the spring scheduled date – fingers crossed.
tide by tide 