7. Engines Off, Stars On — Tom Cunliffe on Seamanship, Self-Reliance & his thriller Hurricane Force

Tom Cunliffe joins us for a proper cup of tea and a wide-ranging conversation about boats, books, and why real seamanship still matters. A merchant seaman turned delivery skipper, Yachtmaster Examiner, columnist and broadcaster, Tom has spent a lifetime at sea—from engine-less beginnings on the Norfolk Broads to long ocean passages on traditional gaff craft and a Colin Archer to South America, the Caribbean and back. He shares the formative moments that shaped his philosophy: sailing without an engine, learning to think like a sailor (not a motor-boater with sails), and why how you recover from a mistake tells you more than whether you make one.

We talk navigation then and now. Tom argues that modern electronics are brilliant—but can diminish us if we forget the craft. He explains why raster charts and analogue plotting still earn a place on an iPad, and how his AngelNav approach lets you keep navigating if GPS goes dark. Starlink, he says, has changed cruising beyond recognition—useful, yes, but it dilutes the old solitude that bred self-reliance.

Tom also lifts the lid on the writing life: columns on both sides of the Atlantic, the decision to leave certain magazines over copyright, and the long road from textbooks and history to fiction. That leads to his new novel, Hurricane Force—a 1970s Caribbean sailing thriller with rave reviews (Alexander McCall Smith calls him “the Dick Francis of yachting thrillers”). We explore why he set it pre-GPS, how real people and places inspire composite characters, and why plotting a thriller sometimes needs an old roll of wallpaper more than a fancy app.

Stories abound: a teenage initiation on a 25-foot gaff sloop with no engine; beating for days into current off Venezuela; sharing an anchorage (and a mishap) with Don Street; ship-handling lessons from the merchant service that still apply to tying up a 45-footer with two people and no drama. Throughout, Tom keeps circling one idea: seamanship is joyful competence—clear thinking, tidy lines, and the confidence to make landfall by the stars if you must.

If you love traditional craft, bluewater problem-solving, or just a well-told sea story, this one’s for you. We cover:

• Learning under canvas: why starting engine-free rewires your seamanship
• The philosophy behind analogue-first navigation on digital tools
• The romance and reality of long passages then vs. now
• How Hurricane Force was born, shelved, and reborn—plus hints at the sequel
• Practical ship-handling tips yacht owners forget (and examiners notice)


Pour a brew, settle in, and let one of yachting’s great raconteurs remind you why we go to sea in the first place, and why the best safety gear lives between your ears.

Transcript

Tom Cunliffe, raconteur extraordinaire, yachtsman, all around good egg, and with a thriller out. So Tom and Ros really kindly agreed to come into Bertham to have a chat about Hurricane Force, which I've read. It's a great read.
But before we unpack that, let's just have a look at, I mean, everybody knows Tom. Everybody knows about Tom Cunliffe. When I think about you, I think of Hertha.
Yes, gosh. Yeah? Yeah. And all the amazing things you did with her.
Yeah, that was a while ago. Starting yachting on the Norfolk Broads, even further away. Yeah, yeah, it's a long time ago.
I was 14 when that happened. And nobody in my family really had anything to do with sailing. My dad had been stroke of his boat at Cambridge.
Oh, really? So he liked boats, yes. And he was absolutely not your classic Cambridge law student. His father was a house carpenter in Preston.
And he got a scholarship to Cambridge in 19, what would it be, 23. My grandfather was a law at Cambridge. Was he? Yeah, yeah.
Well, maybe they were. And the small boat, the two, would you call it the silver boats? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, my dad was in the H. So anyway, that gave him a sniff for the boats.
And as I started growing up, he used to feed me books about the sea for reasons I never fully understood and still don't. But I think he liked them. I think the thing was, in his heart, I think he'd like to have done more adventuring.
But really, with his background and the period that he was born, that was not going to happen, really, unless you were an absolute desperado. And he wasn't. He was a good guy.
Yeah, well, he was a straight up guy. And he didn't have any money, you see. There was no money at all.
So he had to start from scratch. And young barristers are, well, not made of money. And so it took quite a while to get himself established.
Then he got married. And then World War II broke out. So he signed up with the RAF and was six years in there.
And then when he came out, well, he just wasn't going to happen. He had to stick with the job, really, which he did. But I think he quite liked the idea of me doing a bit of unusual stuff.
Anyway, he sent me and my little mate, Martin, from around the corner to Norfolk, put us on the train in Stockport, with a book that said, this is how you go sailing. Peter Heaton, that was the book. Do you remember Peter? You won't.
You're much too young. But Peter Heaton wrote a book that said, I think it was Teach Yourself Sailing or something like that. And to be honest, I don't wish the chap's memory any ill, nill nissi bonum and all that.
But it's got to be said that it was a rotten book. It was all he had. And anyway, off we went.
And we read the book on the train. And we got to Norfolk. And we were presented with a 25-foot gaff sloop with no engine and told to get on with it.
So we did. And we taught ourselves. How can it be? How we taught ourselves how to sail.
And we did, because I think it's a great thing to sail without an engine. The problem with today's sailors, a lot of them, is that they don't really think like sailors, because they think like motorboaters who happen to have a sail. And if you're driving in and out of marinas all the time with an engine, the first thing you do when you get on board is turn the engine on and do what you've got to do.
Get yourself out there where there's plenty of room and pull the sails up and then blow along to where you're going. And then drop them again and drive in. Who was that famous sailor who did all the charting in the Caribbean? Iolaire.
Don Street. Iolaire. Don Street.
I can still remember him being at Birtham. And they were off somewhere else. And he jumped on the boat.
And I think he had one hand with him, put the sails up, and they loved it. Yeah. Didn't have an engine.
No, he didn't. That was it. But it is an interesting thing.
When Ros and I sailed off to, I mean, one thing led to another. And I ended up, fortunately, getting married to Ros. And we bought a little Colin Archer boat built in 1903 by Colin Archer himself in Norway, the real thing.
And we sailed off to her in South America. And she had an engine. But it really, I would say 85% of the time, it didn't work.
So basically, we went to South America and came home via the Caribbean. Well, well down South America, well down to the south of Brazil, and came back via the Caribbean, and used the United States and Canada, largely without an engine. And again, it didn't bother me, because I'd learn how to sail without an engine.
So what happened then? What were you writing then? Were you? No, I wasn't. I was, well, sort of just scrabbling along, really. I was a reasonably competent sailor.
I didn't have any ticket or anything. But we drove a chap's yacht in Rio for a year and made a bit of money, which we promptly lost through misfortune and bad character. And so that was the end of that.
But we made a little bit more, just for doing anything, really, to make money. I mean, when we were in the West Indies in Barbados, where we arrived from Rio 42 days out with no engine, and we got a bit of luck, really. I met a chap, I can't remember his name.
He was an Australian. And he had an outfit that was called Surf and Sand. And he made bikinis.
And he made all these bikinis. And he had a big, he sold them, obviously, in the tourist shops and things. And he had this big consignment of bikinis for South America.
And he said, well, nobody will take these. He said, and I'm desperate. He said, can you take them in your boat? And I said, well, yeah, I can if you want.
But what's the deal? And he offered me $400 US, which in 1975, I suppose, was a lot of money. And it was enough for us to get through the winter. And so we took the bikinis to South America.
And of course, I said, well, it's very nice of you to give us all the money up front. But I said, it seems a bit odd. I said, I would have thought you'd give me 200 and 200 when I got back.
And he said, no, no. He said, you won't be back. And I said, well, why not? He said, well, you'll find out.
He said, you'll find out. And we did. Because when we came out of Margarita Island, where we'd put the consignment of goods ashore, in the official customs warehouse, I mean, everyone was going nudge, nudge, watching the packages.
But I think it was bikinis. We opened one. And Ross had a lovely bikini out of it, beautiful.
And so we then had to beat back, because it's straight up wind, back to Barbados from Margarita Island. And I think it was 100 and something miles, 150 miles or something, to the mouth of the Dragon, where South America falls away and Trinidad is across the way. And it took us nine days to beat to the mouth of the Dragon, 180 miles, 150, whatever it was.
Because we had a little gaff cutter. Canvas sails, this was not a racing machine. It was a good sailing boat, but it wasn't that dynamic.
And the wind was desperate. It was up and down, anything from force two to force seven, typical on-the-coast trade wind being interfered with night and day. And the current was ripping down to Panama at two knots, nonstop.
So we were sailing into a head tide the whole way, basically, with the wind that was going up. Now, we were absolutely exhausted. And when we got to the mouth of the Dragon, we thought, oh, forget Barbados, we'll go to Grenada.
So we went to Grenada instead and started there. I met Don streetfully enough in Grenada. Yeah, I did.
He sailed in with Iolette. And we were in the lagoon there. There was no marinas then.
And there was piles and stuff near the entrance that marked a bit of a shoal, I think. And Don came around there. And one of his hands eased the sheet on the mizzen.
And he got the sheet around the pile. So that was the first time I saw Don Street. And it was a bit of bad luck, really, because it was a bit chaotic.
But he handled it very well. Yeah, really nice man. But I always reckon, as a yachtmaster examiner, it's not whether the chap goes aground or not.
It's what happens after he's gone aground that tells you. No, I think that's right. And so then you came home.
And now, you can't pick up Yachting World, Yachting Monthly, Sailing Today. I mean, you're doing articles, aren't you, sort of really regularly in all the yachting press? Yeah, I have columns at the moment. I have a column.
Oh, in Sail as well, of course. Oh, Sail magazine, yeah. I have a column in Sail in America.
And then we have Sailing Today and Classic Boat. It was a shame, really, because I've been with Yachting Monthly for years and years and years. And I've just had a series of wonderful editors.
And we all got on really well. And the whole thing was done on a handshake. But unfortunately, as things go these days, a new outfit took the magazines over, those magazines, and insisted that contributors signed a contract, which involved handing your copyright to the publisher.
And no professional writer in his right mind would hand over his copyright. So I couldn't sign the contract. So I had to leave Yachting Monthly, which was a great shame.
And World as well. Yes, in the end, World as well. Actually, Elaine Bunting and I, who was editor of the time.
I know that you're Elaine's absolute sweetheart. Yeah, of course. And she and I sort of worked out a funny arrangement, whereby we sort of, I did sign something.
But it didn't really matter, because what I was signing for with Yachting World was slightly different. And it was OK. So we did that for a while.
But in the end, it fell apart as well. But now, I also have a column with, what's it called? Marine Electronics Journal. Marine Electronics Journal in the United States, a very learned publication.
And that always tickles me, because I'm the chap that can tell you where you are to within two miles from the stars of heaven, you see. And I've had electronics thrust upon me as time has gone on. Were you doing this AngelNav thing? Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, now that's a decent Christian sort of app. It's got electronic charts. It goes on your iPad.
It has electronic charts, and they're raster charts, proper charts that look like something the Admiralty's produced, not like a video game, which, if you don't zoom in tight enough, might not choose to tell you the rock you're about to hit. But these are raster charts, which will certainly look after you. And the great thing is, why the app is unique, AngelNav, is because you can plot on these charts from analogue inputs.
So you can get your hand-bearing compass out. If GPS goes down, which is increasingly likely, as our dear friend Uncle Putin starts to spray his grief around, you just get your hand-bearing compass out. And just carry on.
Take a bearing on three things. Plot the lines on your electronic chart, which is in the iPad and is not going away. Of course.
And it has nothing to do with the internet. And having done that, you have a reasonable assessment of where you are. You can then plot a course to steer in a cross-tide using the app, which will do it.
Oh, that's clever. You think for yourself, because it tells you what the tide's doing. It's like most modern apps.
It will do that. But you plot your own vector diagram to go where you want. So it's a sort of thinking man's electronic navigation, really.
And it's fascinating talking to people about this, because you tell them about it. And people will say, well, of course, no, I don't need that, really. I've got Navionics.
Say, well, jolly good. And have a nice day when your GPS decides to shut down. Yeah, of course we are.
Yachting has changed so much, hasn't it? I mean, I think that Starlink has changed yachting beyond all recognition. Yeah. And it's such a shame, because it was so good when we sailed away in the little Colin Archer boat in the 70s.
And we let go our shorelines. And we set off towards South America. And nobody knew where we were.
We were alone under God in the little boat that we were entirely responsible for. And nobody was going to save us. It was the whole thing was up to us and our maker.
And that was really special. That was a marvellous thing. It bred real self-reliance.
And it also gave you a pretty good look at who you really were. Yes. Yes, I see that.
If you can sing out to someone, oh, my engine's broken. What do I do? Well, jolly nice. It's wonderful, isn't it? Everybody can do it now.
But it's just the experience is diluted, just as the experience of making a landfall from the deep ocean is diluted if you have GPS. Because doing it, having seen nothing but the sun and the stars for a month, and up pops the lighthouse, just where you think it's going to be. The satisfaction of that is so deep.
Knowing that you've done it, looking at heavenly bodies marching through space at unimaginable speeds, at distances you can't possibly comprehend, and plotted your position to within two miles on the Earth is amazing. Yeah, it is, actually. Or, of course, you can press the button on the GPS.
Glory in the works of man, and know where you are to the width of your own cockpit. Which would you rather do, really, really? We've got GPS. You can't turn back progress.
And I'm happy to have it. I'm an expert at using it. I write for electronics journals, learned journals in America.
I'm a fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation. And so I do have to do these things. But there is no doubt that at a philosophical level, they diminish us as people.
Yeah, I think, yeah, I mean, I mean, I remember that, that, what was the name, Seabreeze and Tillman used to keep his boats here. I mean, this is, I mean, he did, didn't he? And I know that Brian May's mother, she'd said to me how when he was going off for the season, he'd come for a drink at the shipyard house. And he'd say, Mrs. May, I will be back on September the 12th on the rising tide at 4 o'clock.
And sure enough, Seabreeze, but isn't that extraordinary? It is extraordinary. Yeah, it is. Yeah, that he was able to do that.
He must have kept quite a lot of time in his back pocket as he was coming up the channel to be sure he was going to do it. But it would tickle him to death. He was a man with a sense of humour.
But nobody knew where that boat had been. No. Or what she'd done.
No. And she was, it's that thing you were saying about the reliance, the reliance on you and your boat and your skill and your endurance and all of those things makes the real adventure. Yes, it does.
Yeah. It does. And I do think that today's adventures are a bit of a somewhat watered down.
Because I didn't know, I mean, you're a big writer of books anyway, aren't you? Well, yeah, I am. But mostly, I mean, I've written, what have I done? Best Book of the Sea Award. Yeah, I've got two of them.
I've got three history books, for which I should have had an Elmery Doctorate. But you never get anything doing with any Tom Cundith. And my face doesn't fit.
It's a funny thing, isn't it? Oh, rubbish. No, it doesn't. Not for that, not with the establishment, Sue.
That's why I'm always so pleased when you and Brian and people are nice to me. You just see that everybody knows Tom Cundith. Well, they do, don't they? You are Mr. Yachting.
And what I really love about the stuff that you do, like Steve, you make it make sense. You don't make it complicated. That's not, is it? You don't make it something it's not.
No, it's not, is it? There's really nothing to it. And I don't know why. Also, it's full of laughs, isn't it? People have always got a bit of a proper semen.
We'll always see the joke. And all these po-faced guys, they get up my nose. I deal with all these people, oh, I must have this certificate and that certificate.
I always tell them that I'm proud to say that my lady wife, who has sailed to the Arctic and the tropics, and heard the ice growling off Cape Farewell, and sat at the bottom of a sea that's as high as this building, hasn't even got a competent crew certificate. Yes. I'm so proud of her.
But that's, but it's not about qualifications, is it? No, it's not. But a lot of my books are, you see. And so because I am a sort of extra examiner, I examine the instructors and people.
But I don't anymore, because I've decided I won't work with the OEA much now. And so I retain my examiner status, but I don't examine anymore. But so I know what to do, and I've So I've written loads of textbooks.
Some of them are selling constantly, and still do. They're up to their 10th edition, things like that. So this Hurricane Force.
Yeah, Hurricane Force. So this chap who went off, Ian Hordal, he went off in a boat a bit like Horta. Herta, yeah, my pilot cutter, yeah.
That was a boat built in 1911. And I bet he didn't have Starlink. No, he didn't, because the book takes place in the 1970s.
And I think the baddies' boat was actually an Ocean 62, I seem to think. It was. You did very well to spot.
It was an Ocean 60, actually. It was an Ocean 60. But I think in the book, we don't specify what it is.
No, because you only just say that she's a schooner right at the very end. I was a bit foxed by that. It was only when, I won't give the plot away, but when something happens, and I thought, oh, gosh, there are two masts.
No, I think it does get a mention earlier on, because the owner's wife is a bit doolally. And she gets very romantic about it all. Did I edit that out? Maybe I edited that out.
I might have, actually. The initial copy, she was a bit hot about the boat. And the fact that it was a schooner, the romance of the name.
And schooner rigged in a rakish, with a long and listenable. So you've written lots of books. Shell, Pilot, Cutter, Top Sail and Battle Axe.
You've been the Best Book of the Sea Award winner twice. So you know about writing books. And now you are, as it says on the front cover, the Dick Francis of yachting thrillers.
Well, that's pretty good. And I thought that was really, really charming. That was Alexander McCall Smith said that.
You know, the guy who wrote the number one latest detective agency, who is an old shipmate of mine. Oh, really? Is that how that came about? Because because, of course, it's all Ross's fault, isn't it? Yeah, completely. She found the script.
So how did the script originally get written? Well, it really it all started in 1985, I suppose, or six. We came back from a big trip on on her to the pilot cutter that we had then. The bigger boat was a 35 tonne gaff cutter, which we'd had a bit of a made a pass at Greenland and all sorts of places.
She was actually the third Western yacht into Soviet Russia after the 1917 revolution. So she had an adventurous life with us. But we came back after our made a big trip to America with her and we came back and had nowhere to go and no money as usual.
So we went into the Beaulieu River because I remembered Bill Grindy, who was the harbourmaster there in those days. And Bill, very kindly, on the understanding that I would get some money and pay him sooner or later, put us on the piles in front of the village, as were there then before it all got smartened up. And I got myself a motorbike and I used to ride up to North Wales and teach sailing and examine yacht masters at the National Centre at Plasmeni.
And that went on till the autumn. Our daughter, Hannah, who is now director of National Historic Ships UK. Seriously? Yeah.
Well done her. She used to row ashore and go to the village school at Beaulieu in those days. And she'd never been to school before.
So it was a good start for her. She was, I think, seven or eight, but she was warehead because Ross had taught her to read and write and all the rest of it. So it was an idyllic time, really.
But the winter came and then there was no more sailing and we had no work. And I was desperately trying to sell the written word. And I just was getting a few hits, but not nearly enough.
So I thought, well, I don't know who decided, but it was decided that I'd write a novel. And so we had to plot it. And Ross produced a roll of wallpaper, which she got out of the skip at Beaulieu.
And you need a big piece of paper, Sue, if you're going to plot a thriller, because there's things happening all over the place. I never thought of that. Well, you can't remember who's dead and who's dying and who's, excuse me, who's done this and who's stolen that and who's fallen for who and where they all were 10 minutes ago.
So what you need is a roll of wallpaper. And Ross and I plotted it all out on that. And I wrote it.
And I wrote it. I actually wrote a lot of it in my father-in-law's caravan, which was in the garage in the garden of his place up in Wellow in the forest. And I used to get on the motorbike and ride up there because I couldn't face doing it on the boat.
And anyway, one way or another, the book got written. And when it was finished, we didn't really think that much of it. We didn't think it was much good.
And it wasn't. Truth of the matter is, it wasn't. I was much too immature.
I wasn't a good enough writer to produce a proper novel. It's quite hard, isn't it? Yes, it is. It's surprisingly difficult.
And there's all sorts of little side skills that you have to develop, which I now see and didn't realise then. So it just didn't work. And it got set aside.
And then I got an arrangement with Yachting Monthly to write their seamanship, which I did. Because by then I was a yachtmaster. And I'd submitted myself to a direct entry exam, which I'd passed.
And shortly after that, I'd worked for a while as a merchant navy officer, which you could do in those days in the home trade, if you had some sort of ticket that showed you could navigate, which I did. So I worked as a mate on a coaster for a while. I bet that was great fun.
It was pretty illuminating, actually. And I learned a lot about shiphandling. I laugh when I see the way people tie their boats up in your marinas.
It's quite frankly pitiful. They've only themselves to blame when things don't go well. All they have to do is look at our ship, does it? And it's so easy.
Ros and I tie our yachts up like a ship. It's a piece of cake. A couple of old codgers with a 45-foot boat, me and her, no problem.
Easy. Anyway, there you are. Don't go there.
But anyway, we... So I started writing seamanship for Yachting Monthly. And that led to other things. And then I got asked to write books.
And it took off, really. And then you do YouTube and Instagram and Facebook. Well, all that came very, very, very much later.
It was the books and the articles for years that supplied... And of course, lecturing and private yachting. I mean, I'm well-qualified. So I did quite a lot of private professional yachting.
Did you enjoy writing it? I mean, the second time, first time, second time? Oh, I loved it the second time. The first time, it was hard work. The second time, it was hard work.
But I really enjoyed it. It was great because we did it. We finished it up, really, sailing around the Baltic last summer.
Oh, really? On the boat, yeah, on the boat we have now, which is a 45-foot American Cutter. So do you enjoy, yeah, Constance? Yeah. Yeah? Yeah, yeah.
I remember when you bought it. You'll ever have one of these days. Not for a long time.
No, I hope not, no. So do you get twitchy if you're not writing? Do you need to write? Do you... It's a good question, that. Is it like somebody, you know, playing the piano? Yeah, it is a bit.
We've had a bit of a hiatus in work this last 10 days, for one reason or another. And I haven't been sleeping well. And as a result, it's because I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do the next day because I haven't got a project on that I must do.
And so, actually, I think that's partly why I haven't been sleeping so well. It's interesting because if I know what I'm going to do, I'm fine. I crash out and that's it.
I have a good night's sleep, wake up fresh as a daisy. But it's been quite strange. And that's, I'm sure, what it is.
There's no reason why I haven't got a project. I should have a project because I'm supposed to be writing a sequel to Hurricane Force. I was going to ask, is there going to be another one? Well, yeah, there has to be because that's gone down so well.
Because we've got to know what happens... You have. ...next. Well, you have. And the thing is, well, you know what happens at the end of this.
Yes, but that's only the start of the story, isn't it? Well, in a sense, I suppose, yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. Yeah, isn't it? Yeah, in a sense.
But on the other hand, all the things that have befallen him in this book, that's hard to imagine what's going to happen to him next, isn't it? I mean, what else can go wrong? I expect we'll think of something. Well, actually, I mean, that's the thing that's really engaging about it. Actually, it's all gone absolutely right for him, hasn't it? It has in the end, yeah.
Yeah? And that's why there has to be the rest of the story. Yeah, I think that does. So we're working on that.
And we don't know where it's going to happen either. Because we have good knowledge of a number of places, really, because the period, you see, will not be that different from where it is now. So you're going to stick with that period? I think so.
I mean, why did you choose that period? Because when we originally wrote it, it was live. Of course, of course. It was live.
There was no GPS when we wrote the book first. And and we had just been running a gentleman's yacht of that sort of calibre and size in a tropical place. And and we had met a lot of the characters who you will see trotting through the pages under different names.
Although actually, they're all they're all fabrications, but they're all based on sort of people that we might have known. I'm sure that's the case with a lot of writers. Oh, it has to be.
You just you just put it around somebody that's like somebody. Yeah. I mean, the villains are fabrications because you can't base them on anybody, really.
That wouldn't do at all. No, that wouldn't. No, I don't think you should lie.
What a bunch of blaggards. Absolutely shocking. So, everybody, you need to get hold of this Hurricane Force book by Tom Cunliffe.
It is amazing. It's great fun. It's one of those reads they say that you can't put it down.
And actually, I couldn't. And thank you, Tom, so very much for coming in to have a chat. Lovely to see you again soon.