The Royal Cruising Club Pilotage Foundation publishes pilotage information through books and a range of media acessible through its own website www.rccpf.org.uk.
Reviews of the most recent RCCPF Publications and other books written by RCC members are shown below.
Mark Fishwick compiled his first West Country Cruising in 1988, and the publication of a Tenth Edition by Fernhurst Books is a testament to its continuing popularity.
Cruising Guide to the Netherlands and Belgium is a new first edition from the Royal Cruising Club Pilotage Foundation.
Skip Novak on Sailing: Words of Wisdom from 50 Years Afloat is a fascinating collection of articles contributed to Yachting World between 2014 and 2023.
A Cruising Adventure and How-To Guide by Nicholas Coghlan
Royal Cruising Club Pilotage Foundation Balearic Islands 12th Edition, David and Susie Baggaley
Andrew Wilkes reviews Marek Jurczynski's publication
Skipper Lynam developed his love of the sea and sailing as a schoolboy at King William’s College on the Isle of Man becoming, in time, a successful canoe sailor.
Review of Royal Cruising Club Pilotage Foundation publication ‘Norway, Mainland coast, fjord and islands, including Svalbard and Jan Mayen’ 4th Edition
Bermuda, Azores, Madeira Group, Canary Islands and Cape Verdes:
Editor: Jane Russell, RCC, RCCPF Publisher: Royal Institution of Navigation, 2020. Available as a free download
Nigel Wollen reviews Mark Fishwick's West Country Cruising Companion
An excellent pilot by Madeleine and Stephan Strobel updated May 2020.
4th Edition. By Rod and Lucinda Heikell. A Review of this welcome update by Will Pedder
This practical guide deserves a place of honour on the chart table of any sailing yacht venturing to the Chilean channels or, as Bill Tillman referred to them, ‘the magical place of the unknown’.
"The book is a triumph, and represents a significant raising of the bar. Jo is to be congratulated, and I do hope readers will be enthused sufficiently to cruise the South China Sea."
This book is a very practical guide to long distance ocean sailing, compiled by a very accomplished and experienced practitioner and aimed at the would-be ocean sailor.
This meticulously updated 8th edition invites the cruising sailor to safely explore numerous exquisite locations, reassured by the author's wealth of experience.
Our review of September 2019 updated to include CCA review as a download. This book is not a “how to do it” manual, more a compendium of the most important issues.....
"I commend Christopher and the RCCPF team on producing an excellent book that will be an invaluable resource to anyone making this trip (Trinidad to Tobago) for the first time"
Reviewed by Peter Bruce who says: "This Second Edition is thoroughly comprehensive and gives those with it a huge advantage over those without."
Reviewer Jay Devonshire writes: "An up to date Pilot Book is an essential, and this latest publication is to to be recommended."
For many a sailor, crossing the Atlantic Ocean is their holy grail, the equivalent of scaling Mount Everest for a climber. Both are immense challenges and preparation is key.
The RCC Pilotage Foundation has recently brought out a fourth edition, published by Imray, of their extensive guide to The Baltic Sea and its Approaches.
‘Gibraltar and the five Mediterranean costas of Spain form the subject matter of this pilot.’
Paul Heiney's lavishly illustrated book warrants a well-deserved place in the chart table and has plenty of general interest for those seeking inspiration for their next cruise.
This is a beautifully produced and extremely well structured guide to this very long and diverse cruising ground. Reviewed by Katharine Ingram
The Canary Islands Guide is very much a guide for tourists rather than a pilot book, but as such it has the information for a touring yachtsman to enjoy these islands.
For such a small country The Netherlands has an amazing 6,000km of navigable waterways and there is something there for everyone.
The revised edition of the Arctic and Northern Waters Pilot is a compelling volume that takes the reader into waters that few will travel, for those who go there it is essential reading.
Reviewers Katharine & Peter Ingram write: "This RCC Pilotage Foundation book is a beautifully produced and extremely well structured guide to the vast cruising area that is the Pacific Ocean."
The 3rd Edition of this very useable cruising companion is brought right up to date (2016) by Derek Aslett. Published by Fernhurst Books and available through Imray and many local chandleries.
The newly published third edition of the RCC Pilotage Foundation Norway pilot book by Judy Lomax is reviewed below by Madeleine Strobel
A Sixth Edition of the RCCPF Atlantic Islands Pilot has just been published by Imray. It is reviewed by Alan Spriggs (RCC) below.
This is the 7th edition of this well-known and popular book. There is much that is new in this edition, all beautifully explored and explained.
ONE BLOODY DAY IN MAY
by
DAVID JAMES
ISBN 978-1-923454-58-3 Paperback edition
ISBN 978-1-923454-59-0 E-Book Edition
Published 2026 by The Book Reality Experience
Price not listed
As he promised he would David James has written the third of his trilogy and all within three years. Not only is this an impressive rate of ‘production’ but he has maintained his excellence in storytelling. Our Club is fortunate indeed to have such an accomplished novelist as a member.
Those who have read his first two books will recognise a familiar theme that revolves, partially, around the fate of Jews escaping the holocaust. Before that, though, the Dedication points the way and deserves repeating here: Dedicated to the memory of my father, Jimmy James ISO, DSC, RN and to his grandchildren and great grandchildren. This book is based on real people and real events. It is written as a work of fiction because my father spoke so little of what happened on One Bloody Day in May.
As we learnt with his earlier two books, A Flower in Winter (December 2024) and Out of the Depths (December 2025), the author is very clever at merging fact with fiction. A comparison of the ‘facts’ contained in various Royal Marines and Royal Navy histories with the author’s version of Force Buttercup’s desperate attempts at rescuing allied forces from Boulogne in May 1940, show just how well he has managed this merger. At the risk of spoiling the story the name of Lieutenant Jimmy James is prominent in at least one such historical account. I will go no further for fear of revealing the outcome of Force Buttercup’s operation other than to say that, despite being a retired Royal Navy officer himself (who, I doubt, was ever involved in an infantry fire-fight!) the author’s descriptions of such events, never easy to narrate convincingly, are as superb as they get.
Less surprisingly, David James is equally at home with his descriptions of His Majesty’s warships under air and ground attack. An evaluation of this ‘fictional’ interpretation with the dry history books suggests that the author’s description of Force Buttercup’s role rings more true than the official accounts!
Obviously the hero in One Bloody Day in May is the author’s father - he says as much in the dedication - and although he insists that this is a work of fiction the details described, the ships named and the leading personalities identified are all true to the point that it is impossible to see the ‘joins’. It is such good ‘fiction’ that a father could wish for no better an epitaph, indeed, in the end this whole book is a paean to a remarkable naval officer. In the last chapters we return to facts as the author recounts his father’s latter years.
Reading this book you will be feel the fear that those under fire felt; you will marvel at the leadership and heroics knowing that every detail is based on fact (they probably are fact!) and you will be humbled by such accounts as one of a German soldier saving a French baby from drowning. You will be proud at the humility and humanity of, yes, both sides and will be grateful that the Allies had such men fighting our cause. You will not be disappointed.
From a personal point of view this story is so ‘true’ that I was expecting my mother to appear at any moment for she was, then, a Wren on the staff of the Commander-in-Chief Nore whose real name was not the book’s fictitious Admiral, Sir William Taegle. The ‘real’ admiral, as did Teagle, oversaw the remarkable rescue of hundreds of allied men from Boulogne - the subject of this book - prior to the better known, and far larger, evacuation at Dunkirk.
David James will be familiar with the naval services’ appreciation for a job well done so a well-deserved Bravo Zulu is in order to him for One Bloody Day in May.
Reviewed by Ewen Southby-Tailyour
