News

In recent months, there has been some criticism of Met Office Inshore Forecasts for UK waters. In a letter published in the April PBO, the MCA has given some figures for “accuracy” of forecasts. They state that over a period of one  year, 

• The “hit rate” for gale warnings (for sea areas) was 92% 
• The “hit rate” for coastal strong wind warnings 96%.
• Within a typical 24 hour period forecast, 94% of winds were within one Beaufort force of prediction.

Leaving aside any remark about lies, damned lies etc, what do these figures mean? 

1. To use forecasts unthinkingly, as some seem to do – and then complain.  I hope that no CA members take that approach.
2. To recognise forecasts as broad guidance for use with experience, care and nous.
3. To supplement MCA broadcasts using more detailed (meso-scale) forecasts available free from such as Passageweather.com and Windfinder.com or on repayment from Theyr.com, Predictwind. com or Clearpointweather.com. I doubt that any is consistently better than any other.

The Cruising Association, with the International Sailing Federation and the Royal Yachting Association, has a team in touch with MSCHOA (Maritime Security Centre Horn of Africa) concerning transits by yachts through the zones of high piracy risk in the NW Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden.  MSCHOA co-ordinates the Navy providing a deterrent to pirates in the area.

 A single sheet flyer summarising advice to yachtsmen and the full advice, occupying 7 pages, has been agreed by all the organisations concerned.  The full details are available for downloading from the attachments below.

Around the west of Scotland Portpatrick reception can be difficult to impossible because of topography. On 518 kHz, Malin Head broadcasts Sea Area forecastss for Shannon, Rockall, Malin and Bailey (as well as Irish Coastal  and some High Seas Areas).

As noted in the recent RYA Magazine, HMCG has been in negotiation with their Irish colleagues. The result is that, after a little more trialling,  Malin Head will use the 490 kHz, national NAVTEX frequency to broadcast UK Inshore Waters forecasts. Areas will be the same as Portpatrick ie Land's End to Cape Wrath, the Minch, Lough Foyle to Carlingford Lough.

The B1 letter will be A so that broadcasts will be every four hours from 0000 UTC. I do not know which slots will be for weather; if anyone knows, please tell me. I assume that the other two slots will be used for weather actuals, again, as in the Portpatrick broadcasts.

Between them, Malin Head and portpatrick are expected to give good reception over much of the area.  When around the West of Scotland, it is advisable to select both Portpatrick and Malin Head on both NAVTEX frequencies. That is good advice generally ie select whichever transmitter you want as well as neighbouring stations that  you may be able to receive.

The three UK NAVTEX stations will continue to broadcast four Inshore forecasts each day. However, that means that actuals will only bebroadcast at the other two slots. There is simply not enough time to do otherwise at present.

See my NAVTEX page for schedules of most European NAVTEX transmitters.

It is the season to be out there cruising the Caribbean Sea, sailors are dropping anchor and looking through the binoculars’ at the cross trees of the others in the bay. The CA burgee is a magnet and much convivial planning has been achieved, a ‘Blue Water’ Section is now being launched.

If you are interested in joining the Blue Water Section please send the following details via email to Jill Trew, Sections Group, at dennjord@yahoo.co.uk

Your name; address (if you have one); boat name; communication details, email, SSB net, mobile no(s); your website details, and link to MyCA if you have one. If you would be willing to assist with co-ordinating, e.g the website, the ‘net’ or the ‘forum’, please include this with your reply.

The Blue Water Section is being co-ordinated by Sandy Duker 'MOONSHADOW STAR'. She will be assisted by Sue and Andy Warman 'SPRUCE' with initially assistance from us who are ‘shore side’ to set up the web pages on MyCA and the membership database.

Jill Trew

We hope you like the improved look of the website and that regular users don't have too much difficulty relearning their way round it. We've tried to simplify the menu structure so that all the main options are at the top. When you select one of these you will see extra menus on the left hand side that are relevant to the particular part.

Apart from the appearance, the main difference is that the front pages both for guests and for logged-in members are much more similar to each other although some of the items are different. The old "teasers" of front page news have been replaced by lists of recent items and events.When all our contributors have learned the ropes

We will shortly be changing the address back to cruising.org.uk from myca.org.uk. Don't worry if you have MyCA bookmarked, you will get diverted automatically.

Thanks to those who helped in the transition, particularly Ivan Andrews, David Teall and Jim Baerselman. We're still sorting out a few details and will be experimenting with the format, so let us know through the CA Matters forum if you have any suggestions for improvement.

Chris Moss
CA Webmaster

If you would like to know more and join the Section, please contact either of the Joint Secretaries, directly using their contact details in the CA Yearbook, or soon via MyCA.

There is no charge to join a CA Section. For information of how Sections can enhance your CA membership, please contact any member of the Sections Group.

We are now pleased to announce the date for the first meeting of the Thames Valley Section of the Cruising Association. 

Date: Tuesday 16th March

Time: 7.30pm (Bar will be open from 7.00pm)

Venue: Harleyford Golf Club, Marlow, SL7 2SP 

The club is situated off the Marlow to Henley Road, roughly 1 mile from Marlow.

For those of you who don't know it, it is on the river and as well as the golf club it has a marina and chandlery. Directions can be found at www.harleyfordgolf.co.uk. 

We are in the early stages of forming this group so the aim of this first meeting is to get to know one another, gauge what you would like to get from your group and to share ideas for future meets.  

We hope that as many of you as possible can make it and to give us an idea of numbers we would appreciate an RSVP either by: 

Email: thames_valley@cruising.org.uk  

or phone: 

David Kench, 01628 531805, Jim Smith, 01491 628349,  

We look forward to meeting you all. 

David Kench & Jim Smith

Joint Secretaries CA Thames Valley Section

The CA has over 300 old charts for sale...all at least 40 years old, and many much, much older! Perhaps covering lovely places you've sailed to, they make beautiful presents.

Where a Y is shown in the Elevation column, sketches of views from seaward/lighthouses etc are shown on the chart. A beautiful touch!

We have now moved to another new web server and are hoping that this will solve the problems we've been having. Only time will tell, I'm afraid.

We apologize for the long period of outage today.

Chris Moss

After a few glitches, the transfer to the new server has been completed. There was a problem with character sets caused by the transition between database servers and I've had to revert to Sunday evening's state of the database. We are in the process of restoring the updates that have been made since then.

The outage was to enable us to move the system onto a new webserver with more memory which we hope will improve performance significantly and eliminate many of the errors we've been having over the last few weeks.

This has also affected people who use email addresses at cruising.org.uk and myca.org.uk and they have been informed of the new arrangements which can also be found at http://myca.org.uk/node/312.

A number of posts to forums or MyCA during this period have been lost because of the problem mentioned above. We are in the process of restoring the entries in MyCA and may be able to restore the forum entries. We're sorry about this.

Now I can get back to the much more important transition of reuniting cruising.org.uk and myca.org.uk.

Chris Moss
Hon CA Webmaster

CA members Rachel and Paul Chandler are believed to have been kidnapped by pirates in the Indian Ocean. The couple were cruising in their Rival 38 Lynn Rival and left the Seychelles last Wednesday, expecting to be at sea for about two weeks. They activated their EPIRB two days later and posted a message on their blog saying only ‘PLEASE RING SARAH’.

A source in Somalia has issued a statement saying: "The British couple are in our hands now. We captured them as they were touring in the Indian Ocean." He said the two captives were healthy and ransom demands would follow.

The Foreign Office Consular Directorate have confirmed there are reports that Paul and Rachel’s yacht has gone missing, and that they have been captured. None of these reports can be verified, but the Foreign Office remains concerned, and continues to make careful assessment of the situation.

They have passed details of the couple and their yacht to various international partners in the area, including EU and NATO operations being led by the UK, who are putting resources at their disposal to use in searching for the Chandlers. The Seychelles Coastguard is continuing with their search and rescue operation, and the Foreign Office is staying in close touch with their family in the UK.

The CA, working with other organisations including the Royal Navy, published general guidance on reducing piracy risks in the last edition of their quarterly magazine CRUISING, together with detailed guidance on how to use protected routes when entering the Red Sea. Lynn Rival was travelling to Tanzania, a voyage along the southern edge of the pirate affected zones.

Rachel and Paul are members of the Med and Kent sections and publish an online cruising log at http://blog.mailasail.com/lynnrival

Read a more detailed report about this incident on MedNet or Ted Osborn's report on the piracy situation from the September issue of Cruising.

The CA Almanac is now available at a reduced rate

 £19.50 to members and £22.00 to non-members (plus postage and packaging.)

The Bar at CA house, is now closed on Sundays until 31st March 2010.

Any queries please contact the office.

We're happy to announce several new features on MyCA.

The library catalogue has now been moved to our online database by Ivan Andrews and you can look up the catalogue by author title or category. You will find a link to the search page under "Search" on the left hand side and also under the new "Information Centre" link.

A particularly nice feature of integrating it with MyCA is that if there is a review of the book online, it will automatically be displayed along with the catalogue entry.

The contract for our previous online catalogue has been terminated though it will not be removed yet. But we would warn you that it is out of date and the new one is much better.

Another search members (only) can do is of member information from the yearbook. This can be searched by name, town or boat name. This also uses our online database to give the most up to date version and a link can also be found under Search.

This is an alternative way of finding a member on MyCA. Where there are several people with the same name, it's not always easy to see which is which and the yearbook entry has a link to the MyCA user entry where possible.

Chris Moss

CA House would like to apologise for the delay of any post that you may be expecting from us. Due to continuing postal strike action in East London, our work continues to be affected. If you are expecting anything of urgence or have not received expected post from us, please contact the office.

0207 537 2828

office@cruising.org.uk

The issue of liability for tax for boat owners who keep their boats in Spain for an extended period has been a thorny issue for some time. Click on the heading to see a summary of the matter. 

Two versions (one full, and one more readable!) are available to members through the left hand menu. Go to Cruising Guides>>West Med and you'll find the links there, or use links in the members news items below.  

Meanwhile, here's a publicly available extract from our West Mediterranean Cruising Guide: 

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Tax Residency - A Warning

Care should be taken to avoid the risk of being treated as a tax resident in any given country. This can arise if the owner (not necessarily the yacht), spends more than 182 days a year there. If tax residency is established, you can be required to import and re-flag your boat.

In southern Spain, this tax residency issue is often checked, and the onus of proving non-residence will rest on the vessel’s crew. If you cannot prove your absences adequately, you will be required to re-flag and pay an associated ‘matriculation’ tax of around 12% of the vessel’s value. Add the bureaucracy of meeting Spanish regulations for your boat and qualifications, and it is clear that becoming tax-resident is not to be undertaken lightly.  

Spain also requires EU citizens staying 90 days or more to register with the authorities and obtain a certificate. We believe this was intended to apply to those living in shore property. In the Balearics, the authorities have indicated that those living in boats will not be required to register, and this may be true elsewhere in Spain. However, Spanish regions have great autonomy, and differ widely in the way they implement, interpret and police any regulations, so if you are considering staying over winter, you should always enquire what local implications there are.  

You are always more likely to draw the attention of the authorities if you do any un-declared work.

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The CA Annual General Meeting will take place at CA House on Wednesday, 2 December at 18:30. 

Please note that nominations for Council and officers are now closed.

Diary Dates for Winter 2009-2010

The Section will continue to meet at the Severn Motor Yacht Club, Broomhall, Worcester, just by the crossing of the A38 and A4440, an ideal riverside venue, at 7-30 for 8 pm. except for the meetings expected to be arranged for 18th and 25th. November 2009 when it will be 6.30 for 7.00 pm.  Turn south off the A4440 on to the A38 and then immediately right before the garage (signposted "viewpoint")and the entrance to the Club is opposite the viewpoint. We welcome especially Members who are visiting the area. There is no charge for attending members. Guests are charged £3.00. BAR OPEN FROM 7-15 P.M. 

Changes for 2009-2010._ 

The Winter Season 2007-2008 was characterised by fluctuations in attendance. The October and January meetings were so poorly attended that the viability of the Section was put in question but the November, March and Christmas Dinner gatherings were much better supported. It has been decided to move the meetings to later in the month in the hope that a later start in November and moving the January meeting away from Christmas will improve matters in 2009-2010.

Meetings will therefore now be held on the 2nd. Wednesday of the month from November to March. Please note that there will be an additional meeting on Wednesday 25th. November. 

Thanks to Rosemary Howey for organising a most successful first-aid course. A very good start to this year's programme. 

The Christmas Party. 14 members and guests enjoyed a very relaxed and enjoyable evening in the company of The Commodore of the SMYC and his Lady.

13th. January 2010   Members' Evening. NOW CANCELLED-ADVERSE WEATHER Next meeting 10th. Feb. 2010

10th. February 2010 Nick Bridges will tell us about his experiences taking part in the Jester Challenge.

10th. March 2010  Douglas Addison will recount his experiences finishing off his Baltic cruise and his return journey to Poole. 

Link with Midlands Coastal Cruising Club. Members may attend the Midlands Coastal Club at a reduced visitors' fee of £2.50 on production of their CA Membership card. Visit www.midlandscoastalcruising.co.uk for full details. The Club meets of the 1st and 3rd. Tuesdays of the month from Oct. to March. The next meeting  will be held on Tuesday 5th. January 2010. It will be an evening when members will recount their exploits, both sailing and otherwise, during 2009. On Tuesday 19th. January Katie Miller and/or her father will tell the Club about her experiences in the OSTAR last year. Should be well worth hearing. 

Meetings are held at Ashwood Social Club at Ashwood Marina on the Staffs. and Worcs. Canal which is close to the A449 between Wolverhampton and Kidderminster, very close to Wall Heath. Meetings are 1930 for 2000.

I hope you are able to join our activities this winter season. 

Best Wishes, 

Alan Birch Hon. Section Sec.