“Offshore cruising in an open boat can be hard, cold, wet, lonely and occasionally miserable, but it is exhilarating too. To take an open dinghy across a hundred miles of sea, taking weather as it comes; to know that you have only yourself and your mate to rely on in an emergency; to see the beauty of dawn creep across the ever restless and dangerous ocean; to make a safe landfall - is wonderful and all of these things develop a self-reliance that is missing from the modern, mechanical, safety-conscious civilised world.” Dye, Frank; Dye, Margaret (2006)

Ocean Crossing Wayfarer (2nd ed.) London:
Adlard Coles Nautical. p. 2.

Starting Saturday May 31st, two sailors from Thornbury Sailing Club in Gloucestershire, UK, aim to sail an open boat around mainland Britain in record time. The current best is 76 days and the target is 60 days. This team, Phillip Kirk and Jeremy Warren, intend to demonstrate self-sufficiency and good seamanship, and in the spirit of sailing adventurer Frank Dye (1928-2010), reaffirm that a Wayfarer dinghy can undertake extended offshore passages safely. Phil and Jeremy seek to foster good will between sailing clubs and leave a trail of TSC pennants in clubhouses around Britain.

The direct distance is 1500 miles and the plan is for approximately ten hops of 200 miles. Each “hop” is three days, with two nights spent at sea. Going clockwise from Weymouth, up the Irish Sea, west of the Isle of Man, they’ll drop into Northern Ireland (it’s on the direct route) then off up the west coast of Scotland. This will take in the formidable headlands of Cape Wrath and Duncansby Head, sandbanks of the Thames Estuary, and the familiar headlands of the south coast.

Our home club of Thornbury SC is on the English side of the Severn Estuary, three miles upstream of the older of the two Severn bridges, and about twenty miles north of Bristol. At Oldbury the estuary is two miles wide...when the tide is in! On spring tides the tidal rise can be as much as ten metres, and we can only sail for three hours in every twelve – the rest of the time its mud, for miles. Getting all that water in, ten metres high and two miles wide, in six hours means the spring tide runs at up to four knots past the club, and more than ten knots in the narrow “Shoots” shipping channel between the Severn bridges.

There is no Severn Bore here, that’s further up, at least another 10 miles, where the two mile width at Thornbury squeezes down to 60m and narrower. The Bore is a tide-driven wave, for up to 2m high, rushing upstream with the incoming tide. It is on the Severn Bore that the world record longest surf ride was achieved, and that was a ride of more than ten minutes.

The club was founded by the late Edmund Grace in the fifties; appropriately Edmund was then landlord of the Anchor Inn in the village of Oldbury Upon Severn. Sailing was in sturdy Yachting World Dayboats, a fourteen foot clinker dinghy weighing in at over 200kg, giving them good sea keeping properties. Now the club has a thriving membership of more than 250 family units, comprising cruisers up to 10m moored on mud berths, cruiser racing and good dinghy racing in cats and a variety of dinghies including Wayfarers and also Cherubs, the twelve foot super-light skiffs. TSC has a club house with bar and changing facilities, and is registered RYA sailing school, running both sail and powerboat training.

The best of TSC, in our view, are the long-distance races that take us up-river and back on a tide, to Sharpness and Lydney, and also the family Club Week. Club Week utilises TSC’s enormous acreage of fields, perhaps a square mile, where around 50 families set up a tented village with sailing and social activities during a week of August.

Thornbury Sailing Club can be a wild and timeless place. It is set apart from the nearby cities and towns, and the agenda is set by this magnificent and powerful river. Thornbury Sailing Club is our spiritual home.