LINKS TO OTHER WEB SITES
and some useful books to read.


PLEASE NOTE THAT INFORMATION ABOUT BOOKS AND  LINKS IS ADDED FROM TIME TO TIME AS INFORMATION ABOUT THEM BECOMES AVAILABLE.

IF YOU KNOW OF A WEB SITE THAT WILL BE OF INTEREST TO TRAIL SAILORS, PLEASE TELL US, SO THAT IT CAN BE ADDED TO THIS PAGE, BY USING THIS LINK



Slipway at Port le Foret South Brittany.
Adequate free safe parking nearby.
.Petrol (sans plumb) and Diesel available from pontoon near to the slipway. 
Choice of resturants 100 metres behind photograper. Also two chandlers.
Travel Hoist (Costs a lot less than in UK !)
Very sheltered marina at head of sheltered bay, suitable for large dinghies and upwards. (Caravans and camping nearby.)

Courteous welcome, English aparently not spoken.

Marina is at the head of sheltered bay. If the weather is good, Les Isles Glenans are less than half a day's sail away. Access to whole of South Brittany's very interesting coast line is easy as coastal currents very weak, and the sea water is always warm !

Everybody who entertains a dream of 'going foreign' has to find a safe place to launch for the first foreign cruise. Starting from here may be better than basing a cruise in the Gulf of Morbihan. 

How about Holland ?
Don't forget though, that if you are worried about speaking a foreign language, every person in Holland speaks English to some extent. (About 10% of the Dutch people possibly speak English better than 20% of the British population !!  They all claim to speak 'Just a little' when asked if they speak English, and deny that the Western side of Holland was expressly built for trail-sail yachts.)
                 WELCOME TO THE WEB SITE OF THE
TRAIL-SAIL ASSOCIATION
                              www.trail-sail.org.uk
Our small burgee can seen in many ports and on rivers & lakes in the UK & Europe
CLS Publishing Ltd                                                £7.95
ISBN 0-9542967-0-2

100+ pages, with perhap details of six or eight launching sites per page, it starts with a map clearly showing where they are to be found inland, and on the coast. Some pictures, all mono-chrome.
The front cover shows one image of a trail-sail boat, and four images of power boats, clearly indicating the market it is aimed at.  Indeed, every slip is categorised as to allowing or refusing Personal Water Craft, or if it is not known what is allowed.

Information given varies between pauce and very detailed.

This is the very latest publication, and it's source of information comes from people who use the associated web site
Opus Book Publishing                      
ISBN 1-895574-08-1

Starts on the Belgian border. Bill MacDonald reports systematicaly on the entire French coast round to St Nazare, South of Brittany. (20 degree water South of Brest means the weather is always better for trail-sail boats.) Useful glossary of French boating words at back adds unecessary value to what is already a good purchase covering 260 sites.

£9.95.
v-17RYA
Dec 06
TOPIC INDEX
(Scan down this page looking for background colour.)
 
BOOKS
LEGAL INFORMATION
 
BOAT SAFETY SCHEME
FOR INLAND WATER WAYS
WEATHER
 
TIDES
Published by the Stationary Office
ISBN 0-11-552022-8

Prepared by the Police Foundation mainly for caravans, some is just for boat trailers  10% of content is useful reading if you have a lot of trailing experience, more is you have none at all. Well worth having to brouse through, if only to find out how just much you know.

£9.95.
Opus Book Publishing
ISBN 1-898574-02-2

By Diana van der Klugt.
She describes 650 places to launch that are on the coast or lakes, where there are slipways suitable for small boats.There are no pictures, but the style of the descriptions is constant, so after using the book a couple of times, the informtion makes more sense

£6.95
Published by Barnacle Marine
ISBN 0 948788 00 3

This image is an out-of-date version, (somebody borrowed my later one) The latest edition is thicker, and has a wealth of information that makes it good value for money. Covers coastal and inland launching sites, directions how to get there, and details of fuel and parking etc.
 
The TRAIL-
SAIL HANDBOOK for
British
&
European waters
Sorry, there is no such book available at the present time, although as pages keep getting added to this web-site, it will eventualy evolve into the equivalent of just such a book.

American books do exist, but do not easily translate to British and European ways of doing things, or describing them.
 
 
SAFETY
The Royal National Lifeboat Institution. The home page of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.
Sea Check  Arrange for an informal check over your boat, in case you've forgotten something.
        You are not forced to change anything, buy anything, or do anything after a SEA CHECK, except perhaps think.

Donations to the RNLI   (A prudent expenditure to support something that you pray you will never need.)

The Camping and Caravan Club. (For towing advice, and courses on tailer towing.)
The Caravan Club  (Provides information on suitable towing vehicles etc - BUT you've got to join first !)

This web site is developing two pages, Thoughts on Safety and one that stands alone for ease of printing, Towing Check-list, which suggests things to do to in order to arrive safely
THE BOAT SAFETY SCHEME

Hopefully, this is still evolving, and is not yet cast in bureaucratic concrete, because it does not address matters of safety relating to sea-going SAILING BOAT - it looks at  the safety features of canal barges and motor cruisers, that do not heel over when driven by the wind. This means that if some topics are strictly enforced on a sailing cruiser with an auxillary out-board engine, the boat will be less safe when the skipper chooses to use the wind as a means of propulsion through the water.

The Scheme is broken into two parts - Mandatory and Advisory. Unless a boat complies, it will not be granted a licence to use Inland Waterways.  Few cruising yachts will want to sail on a canal, but the intention is to get the Scheme to apply to all inland waters, including rivers and lakes where cruising yachts will want to travel.  (It is reported that, unless Loch Ness is entered from the sea, boats without a certificate will be banned from sailing there.  It is possible that the Broads Authority will have to take the same approach, but will also allow short term exemptions for sea going boats arriving on a trailer.)       
 
                               No Certificate of Conformity = No Navigation Licence.       
(Started 2005 and applied to larger boats first. Smaller visting boats may need to comply in 2009)

The authors take matters much further than the European Recreational Craft Directive, and whilst a new boat will carry a CE mark, it could well be rejected for a Boat Safety Scheme certificate. Older boats are allowed some exemptions.

Details of the Boat Safety Scheme, and how to arrange for an inspection, (to be paid for), can be obtained from British Waterways,  the Environmental Agency,  the Association of Inland Navigation Authorities, and on the WEB SITE www.boatsafetyscheme by clicking here   (Which you are urged to do, because, if your boat can not be made to comply, you may not be able to use it, and nobody will want to buy it from you.)


WHEN MORE DEFINITE INFORMATION IS ACQUIRED, IT WILL BE SHOWN HERE

PLEASE CONTACT THE TSA WEB MASTER  IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION OR QUESTIONS
.

THERE IS A HIGH RISK THAT YOUR RIGHT OF FREE PASSAGE ON A NAVIGABLE WATER-WAY WILL BE
TAKEN AWAY FROM YOU, BY UNELECTED PEOPLE WHO HAVE NO KNOWLEDGE OF SAILING BOATS,
AND WHO WILL USE THE WORD 'SAFETY' TO DENY YOU YOUR RIGHT OF ACCCESS.
 
WEATHER,  WEATHER WEB SITES and WEB CAMS looking at the sea

An awarness of the weather, and what it is going to do, is obviously the prime safety topic that all small craft skippers need to be constantly aware of.  These days, super-computers can sometimes give very accurate long term forecasts, and at other times, struggle to reach beyond three days.  The prudent skipper will know that when there is HIGH PRESSURE, the longer forecasts are probably going to be accurate, whereas LOW PRESSURE creates so many alternatives, that it becomes impossible to calculate which one will happen.

Which is why, with a fixed time allowance to give the information, when low pressure is around, the forecaster will talk a lot about the next day, and ignore next week.  Yet, when high pressure is present, the forecaster talks confidently about many days into the future.

Navtex provides a good means of monitoring the near future, and the NASA made receivers are excellent value for money on a small boat. They not only pull in the information when the aerial is fixed in a place suitable for towing a boat on the roads, but consume so little power that, operating 24 hours a day as they must, they do not affect the electricy reserves available from a small battery.

Land based radio stations such as Radio 4 provide a general out-look, and local radio stations usualy give relevant information for passage planning at user friendly times.

The internet has several good sites - some reaching out to 60 days or more - but are still limited in their accuracy by the fact that the behaviour of depressions is a very complex matter to calculate.
A good general guide can be obtained from the UK Long Range Weather Centre

If you want to watch the way the swirling winds will bring different air temperatures to a place of interest, then the German web site Wetterkart is helpful, but does not show where any rain will fall.

Other sites       The really usefull weather page which shows synoptic charts.
                          R.N.L.I on-line weather
                          Online Weather
 

TIDES.
The prudent skipper will insist on knowing what the tides are doing, if thinking about sailing on the sea.

The information is documented on a day by day basis in almanacs, such as the Reeds Almanac, that are published every year. As are those offered by the Cruising Association and the magazine Practical Boat Owner.  These books also provide varying degrees of additional information, which is reflected in the size and price, and usualy include small chartlets of harbours. More importantly, even out-of-date ones are valuable, because they give the relationship between local tidal times and those of Dover. With an up-to-date table of Dover tides, which are the most freely available predictions, what will happen on a particular day in a particular place, can thus be calculated.

There is a web site, run by the UK Hydrographic Office in conjunction with the Admiralty Chart Service, which can be found on www.ukho.gov.uk/tideprediction.cfm  that provides world wide information on tides. If the information is printed out to be taken on board - which is a good idea - remember that printer inks are water soluable, and good shower of rain could ruin the writing.

If you wanted to download your own tidal prediction program from the internet before the British Government decided that it could make money out safety concious people wanting to know what the tides will do, there was a sare-ware program called WXtide32.   It may be worth looking on the Internet to find out if somebody beyond the reach of a British policeman is still making the program available.  Be aware though that at some parts of a month, it's predictions are very close to reality and at others they are a long way from the observed events of the day. 
 
THIS PAGE IS STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION.
IT HAS ONLY BEEN PUBLISHED PART FINISHED TO ANSWER THE  E-MAILS
SENT EACH WEEK, ASKING FOR INFOMATION ABOUT LAUNCHING SITES AND OTHER THINGS.
THE BOOKS MENTIONED ABOVE GIVE ENOUGH DETAILS TO WHET THE INTEREST OF EVEN THE MOST JADED OF TRAIL-SAIL CRUISERS, WHO MIGHT THINK THEY HAVE SEEN MOST OF THE CRUISING GROUNDS THAT CAN BE REACHED FROM THEIR BACK GARDEN BOAT PARK FOR A SUMMER HOLIDAY VOYAGE.
READ
THIS
 
SAFETY
CLICK HERE FOR A LINK PROVIDING MORE INFORMATION ABOUT PRETTY WINKLE BRIGS.