Robinetta

We have owned our yacht Robinetta for 7 years, and never gone far from home, but in 2014 we decided it was time she finished going round Britain. I say finished, because after Robinetta was built at Birkenhead in 1937, she headed north, and in 1938 got to the Isle of Skye. From there she headed anticlockwise, making it to the East Coast of England in the late 1940s, where she stayed until May 2014. She is only 20”on the waterline, and we passage plan at 3 knots, so it was going to be a slow trip!

Circumnavigating Ireland is hardly an unusual thing. Yachts do it every year, many of them in the Biannual Volvo Round Ireland race. In 2016 63 yachts took part in this, travelling 704 nm non-stop. The fastest (a multi-hull) got round in under 39 hours with the first monohull managing it in just over 50 hours. Rough weather meant that 15 boats retired, but all finishers were over the line inside 6 days. These are all big boats, and I am sure their crews had a good time, but racing round is not something we would do in our own yacht. For a start Robinetta is small, just under 7m on deck, and slow. She is also old, having been built in 1937. We like to take care of her, which means not putting her, or ourselves at risk. When we set off from Largs in April 2016 with the idea of cruising round Ireland we gave ourselves nine weeks to do it. Due to work the nine weeks were split up through the spring and summer, which ended up giving us much better weather for the trip than we dreamed of! Day Sailing Round Ireland is the perfect description of what happened during those nine weeks. This is the 5th in the series recording our sailing adventures in Robinetta, but is a standalone book of a major trip.

After a winter in Bristol Julian and Alison Cable set out to bring their elderly gaff cutter Robinetta back to the East Coast of England after five sailing seasons going round the British Isles. There were still places to explore on the way, including the Brittany coastline. That was so long as they could get their 7m long yacht across the English Channel. Inspired by the song "Spanish Ladies" they decided to head from Scilly to Ushant, then spend as much time as possible exploring the Brittany coastline and attending the Temp Fête at Douarnenez before heading back home to the river Blackwater in Essex. This is the story of how they accomplished their mission in the summer of 2018, a summer when the weather was not always as forecast!