Tom Cunliffe

Southampton

Contributor at Sail Magazine

Sailor, writer, TV presenter, speaker. Also on https://t.co/jOZoSpVn8Q and https://t.co/RI1TFzaxN2… #sailing ⛵️

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Articles

Eric Tabarly's Win & Wine with Tom Cunliffe

2 weeks ago | classicboat.co.uk | Tom Cunliffe

Tom Cunliffe tells us of the day Eric Tabarly came aboard. It’s high summer. The regatta scene is here and, as many of us know, when it comes to putting on a good time there’s none like the French. In my days as a pilot cutter owner I sailed in many a Gallic maritime spectacular.
Cruising Tips: Slack Water & Filters

2 weeks ago | sailmagazine.com | Tom Cunliffe

You won’t often find water as slack as it is in this Dutch canal, so if you aren’t sailing in a locked-in system, check a passing lobster trap buoy around the turn of the tide for current. If there’s no stream you’ve a great opportunity to set up compass and log. Compass checking was once a big deal; calibrating a distance log was time-consuming and inherently inaccurate, involving measured miles between charted ranges. That’s all history now. Set the GPS readout to degrees magnetic.
What are Homeward Bounders?

1 month ago | classicboat.co.uk | Tom Cunliffe

Tom Cunliffe explains an Atlantic sail & trouser crisis…There’s no calling like the sailor’s for rich vocabulary. So many of our day-to-day phrases have passed into the universal vernacular that we’ve lost count. ‘Three sheets to the wind’, ‘taken aback’, ‘between wind and water’ the list goes on. Some phrases are more specific. At a hustings in our town recently the main protagonist was ‘brought up all standing’ by a shrewd heckler.
Cruising Tips: Hang on and In a Pinch

1 month ago | sailmagazine.com | Tom Cunliffe

Moving aft from the foredeck on a windy day, have you noticed a sort of no-man’s land between the mid-deck where coachroof grabrails keep crew safe, and the cockpit where all one’s troubles should be left behind? Clambering around the spray hood can present a challenge, especially if, by some oversight, you’ve somehow ended up on the “downhill” side of the boat. A pal of mine came up with a truly seamanlike solution to this.
Great seamanship: unstepping a solid wood mast solo

1 month ago | yachtingworld.com | Tom Cunliffe

Tom Cunliffe introduces this extract from Steve Pickard's tale of cruising through the canals of France – and an ambitious plan to drop his yacht's mast solo TAGS: Great SeamanshipTop stories The late Steve Pickard was the very essence of a cruising sailor. Never a high-aspiration man, he did not round Cape Horn or sail the Northwest Passage. Instead, he operated relatively modest craft in Europe and the Mediterranean.
How to Tackle Arctic Sailing: Northwest and Northeast Passages

2 months ago | sailingtoday.co.uk | Tom Cunliffe

In recounting the tales of the many successful and failed voyages to the far north, Tom Cunliffe says in Arctic sailing lessons can be learned from the likes of Kipling…As I strolled through the throng at the Gosport boat jumble in search of that ever-elusive bargain, I met up with my pal Ella Hibbert. Ella plans to circumnavigate the Arctic (northwest and northeast passages) later this year on her own. She has a proper boat and is as comprehensively prepared as she can be. We wish her well.
Cruising Tips for April

2 months ago | sailmagazine.com | Tom Cunliffe

This will be of no interest to anyone sensible enough to sail a 20-footer, but if your yacht is a long one, you’ll have had similar experiences to me. You’re coming into a strange berth—head-up box berths are the worst—perspective has foreshortened, and you’re unsure how far you are from the harbormaster’s woodwork. I recently asked one dockside loafer to call it out. “Ten feet,” he announced. On I came, and a second later I T-boned the piling. It turned out he’d been looking at the waterline.
Should We Rig Tripping Lines? How to Protect Your Anchor

2 months ago | sailingtoday.co.uk | Tom Cunliffe

Learning the lesson the hard way is the risk you take for not going ‘by the book’ when it comes to rigging a tripping line, Tom Cunliffe warns us. I don’t know about you, but when the chart tells me I ought to consider rigging a tripping line to protect my anchor I always think at least twice. Unless the evidence for taking this step is overwhelming, with direct promises from the cartographer of ‘foul ground’ or some such horror, the line-up of downsides can be hard to ignore.
Can a Chart be Trusted? Tom Cunliffe's Battle with Wind & Tide

2 months ago | classicboat.co.uk | Tom Cunliffe

On my way for a lunchtime pint in the Jolly Sailor I paddled up to the doorstep of the waterfront house of an old friend between the boatyard and the pub. He invited me in for a coffee, remarking that despite all he’d read in the papers and the southwesterly that had been blowing up the Solent all week, today’s spring tide wasn’t going to be any higher than the other big ones he’d seen since the 1950s.
Tom Cunliffe's Praise of the Honest Boatbuilder

Mar 28, 2025 | classicboat.co.uk | Tom Cunliffe

One of the surprising things about traditional boat building is the variation in levels of sophistication. I have deep admiration for those who create a curved deck beam out of a single piece of oak, cut dovetails into the ends, then lower it into the cutouts in the beam shelf. It fits to the millimetre first time. How do they do that? And what about shaping the close-seamed planks for a Tumlare yacht or a Mevagissey Tosher?